Pompeii, Its Life and Art by August Mau

Author:August Mau [Mau, August]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, General, Romantic, Fiction, Nonfiction, Fantasy, Religion & Spirituality, New Age, Reference, History, Social History, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 9781465581686
Google: vGvEOyRrMxIC
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2021-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

XII. The Shops

The outer parts of the houses fronting on the principal thoroughfares were utilized as shops. On the more retired side streets there were fewer shops, and we often find a façade of masonry unbroken except for the front door and an occasional window.

Fig. 130.—Plan of a Pompeian shop.

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1. Entrance.

2. Counter.

3. Place for a fire.

4. Stairway to upper floor.

5, 5. Back rooms.

The shop fronts were open to the street. The counter, frequently of masonry, has in most cases the shape indicated on our plan (Fig. 130, 2), being so arranged that customers could make their purchases, if they wished, without going inside the shop. Large jars were often set in it, to serve as receptacles for the wares and edibles exposed for sale. Sometimes on the end next to the wall there are little steps, on which, as seen in our restoration (Fig. 131), measuring cups and other small vessels were placed. At the inner end we see now and then a depression (3) over which a vessel could be heated, a fire being kindled underneath as on a hearth. In the wineshops a separate hearth is sometimes found, and occasionally a leaden vessel for heating water.

In the houses of the Tufa Period the shops, as the front doors and the rooms about the atrium, were relatively high. Those of the house of Caecilius Jucundus measured nearly 16 feet; those of the house of the Faun, 19 feet; the appearance of the latter may be suggested by our restoration (Fig. 139). The height was divided by an upper floor, pergula, 10 or 12 feet above the ground, along the open front of which was a balustrade; the stairs leading to it were inside the shop. On such a pergula Apelles, according to Pliny (N. H. xxxv. 84), was accustomed to display his paintings; and in the Digest reference is more than once made to cases in which a person passing along the street was injured by an object falling upon him from the second story of a shop. 'Shops with their upper floors' are advertised for rent in one of the painted inscriptions found at Pompeii (p. 489).

Fig. 131.—A shop for the sale of edibles, restored.

In Roman times the shops, as the inner rooms of the house, were built lower, and over them small closed rooms were made, which were called by the same name as the open floor, pergula. These rooms were frequently accessible from the street by a stairway, and in such cases could be rented separately. In colloquial language, a man whose early life had been passed amid unfavorable surroundings was said to have been 'born in a room over a shop,'—natus in pergula.

Shops were entered by means of small doors; the front was closed with shutters. These consisted of overlapping boards set upright in narrow grooves at the top and the bottom. A separate set of shutters was provided for the open pergula.

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