Greek myths on Pompeiian walls by numbers, and networks
Written by Greta Hawes
As we get to the end of 2024, I’ve been working to finish up a task that started as a small idle thought, and ended up taking over much of my year: capturing all the mythic scenes from Pompeiian wall paintings and mosaics.
Much of the work was done on by a crack team of Macquarie PACE interns in an extraordinary 2-week sprint to cover all of the material in the Pompei: Pitture e mosaici volumes. Then Elle Platt and I spent the rest of the winter checking, re-checking, and cross-checking this data, adding to it bit-by-bit from other catalogues and repositories.
Finally, then, we have some statistical results! In this post, I’m celebrating the completion of this little project by compiling some facts and figures. (And if you have the skills to take these analyses and visualisations further, some data is available in Zenodo, or get in touch.)
We have identified 251 houses at Pompeii that have mythical scenes depicted on walls or floors. Where possible, we have aligned our houses with PALP and Pleiades. You can access this data here. We include an analysis of how many different mythic people, places, and objects are depicted in each building. Among the “winners” appear the usual suspects: Casa del Criptoportico, in particular, with its Trojan War panels racks up the numbers to come out on top:
Within these houses we identified 450 wall painting or mosaic “artifacts” . For the purposes of this project, we have defined an “artifact” as all the paintings or all the mosaics in a room within a house, i.e. one “artifact” might consist of several different scenes. The major exception is wall paintings in museums which can no longer be assigned to an exact location in Pompeii. In these instances, the “artifact” is typically a single panel or series of panels of painted wall that has been removed from the site. Where possible, we have identified these artifacts by collection inventory numbers (most are in MANN) and aligned them with PALP and LIMC. You can access this data here, including some finds like decorative armour and vessels from the site that we have also included in MANTO.
(This is a good time to mention caveat #1: I think we have captured every mythical scene that appears in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici (PPM), Pittura Pompeiana, and most of those in Digital LIMC. We have also added the most recent excavations published in Scavi di Pompei. What we do not have good coverage of is any wall paintings excavated between the publication of PPM and the most recent finds (i.e. roughly late 1980s to early 2020s). And if anyone can help with this — get in touch!)
Now for the more interesting numbers: who’s — or what’s — actually on these walls?
Again, a straight-forward numerical analysis is enlightening: we have captured 435 different mythical entities (data here or look in MANTO). These are the high performers:
On this table, the “count” is not quite indicative of how many times in total Aphrodite or Ariadne might be depicted at Pompeii. Here caveat #2 is necessary. Firstly, this is a count of appearances on separate “artifacts”. If (e.g.) Aphrodite appeared twice in the same room, this analysis would only count her once.
Caveat #3 is also relevant: Because MANTO is primarily interested in mythic narratives, we have only captured instances where gods, personifications, and major heroes are active in narrative scenes. So we have not captured scenes where Aphrodite, Eros, Dionysos et al are simply standing around doing nothing. (Even with this caveat, it is notable how the Olympians dominate our “top performers”. )
And … caveat #4: Because we are interested in myth and not (strictly) iconography, our definition of a “depiction” is tailored specifically to our needs. So, where Ganymedes is depicted being carried off by an eagle, we have identified “Zeus” in the scene, since the eagle is him in disguise. Likewise, where Ariadne is lying abandoned on the shore, with a boat perhaps sailing off in the distance, we have identified “Theseus” as part of the scene since, in mythical terms, this is the episode of his abandonment of her.
Numbers tell you one thing, but certainly not everything. There is, I can assure you, no substitute for flipping through every page of every ridiculously heave volume of PPM, perhaps twice.
For one, it’s noticeable how few narratives appear on Pompeiian walls that aren’t depictions of Greek myth. Amongst this handful are depictions of Sophonisba, Pero, and the Judgement of Solomon. By-and-large even the Italian aspects of Greek myth (Aeneas’ flight from Troy, Dido, Priam handing over his sceptre) are comparatively rare. The founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus appear four and three times respectively. There is one (uncertain) depiction of Heracles and Euandros on the site of Rome.
Aphrodite and Ares. Wall painting from Casa dell’Amore Punito, Pompeii VII 2, 23. Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9249. See in MANTO here. Used under Creative Commons license.
The overwhelming impression of the wall paintings is in fact (as most of the PACE blogs can attest!) repetition. The same scenes and characters appear time and again. So, when we return to our list of “top performers” we can identify individuals who really just appear in the same scene over and again: the 42 appearances of Narcissos all involve him looking into a pool of water. Andromeda (29) is inevitably being saved from the Sea Monster (23). Leda (22) will usually be pictured with Zeus-in-the-form-of-a-swan. But other figures are involved in several different kinds of scenes. Aphrodite’s 99 appearances include both her being paired with Ares (42), and her being awarded the golden apple by Alexander (49) amongst other things.
This list of appearances cannot, then, properly capture the intersections of mythic scenes with each other. For this, we need to think rather in terms of the networks that emerge from this dataset, networks which reveal how the reoccurrence of mythic figures in different scenes points towards the existence of mythic storyworld, in which stories were woven together as people, places, and objects reappear in different configurations.
Xinyi Xu has modelled the mythic storyworld depicted at Pompeii using this dataset. Her network shows that, although each individual scene may show just a handful of characters, these are not conceptually isolated from one another but cohere to an extraordinary extent:
Network graph representing the Greek mythic storyworld as depicted on wall paintings and mosaics at Pompeii. Data drawn from MANTO’s dataset, with co-occurrence of entities in a tie used as a proxy for narrative interaction. Colour of nodes represents entity type; size indicates number of appearances. Width of edges represents number of connections. Data and full resolution graph available here.
Graphic: Xinyi Xu.
This visualisation is a first step towards understanding Pompeii’s distinctive perspective on Greek myth. This city is valuable to us for so many reasons. From MANTO’s point of view, it gives us an extraordinary perspective on the use of Greek myths in one kind of decorative scheme at a very particular point in time. There is certainly an iconographic vocabulary evident, but also perhaps a set of mythological preferences. I’m interested, for example, in the prominence of female characters which is not typical of the Greek mythic tradition in general. I suspect that this female visibility is connected to the large number of paired lovers (or, ex-lovers) depicted at Pompeii. Could we in any case separate out aesthetics from mythic interest? Are the numerous images of Thetis taking up Achilles’ new weapons really evidence of interest in the Trojan cycle, or might we rather explain them as part of a broader visual interest in juxtaposing beautiful women with martial accoutrements? This, after all, must underpin to some degree the popularity of images of Venus with Mars, or of Achilles grabbing at a shield surrounded by the daughters of Lycomedes on Scyros.
Achilles, hidden amongst the daughters of Lycomedes on Scyros, is discovered by Odysseus when he reaches to claim a gift of weaponry. Wall painting from the House of the Dioscouroi, Pompeii VI, 9, 6 tablinum (42). Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9110. See in MANTO here. Used under Creative Commons license.
And there are also significant geographical dynamics to explore. I can’t find any hint in these narratives of stories set specifically around Vesuvius. Certainly there are a good number of scenes from myths that functioned elsewhere as markers of local identity (e.g. Hero and Leander at Sestos), but at Pompeii, even where they still retain their topographical markers, they look more like general narrative paradigms. What would be an appropriate comparative dataset if we were to apply similar mid-sized-data methods? Latin poetry of the early Empire, perhaps, with its prominent heroines and love-motifs? Contemporary depictions of myth in other media? The paintings found elsewhere in Campania and Latium?
A first step, then, but likely not a final one.
Thanks go to the PACE interns on this project — Hallie Burke, Charne Combrink, Caitlin Hanich, Corey Hynds, Emily Mifsud, Jade Wallace — and to four RAs who were central to its success — Jessica McKenzie for getting us started, Elle Platt for all that checking, Zinyi Xu for converting ideas and data into networks, and Ewan Coopey for making the data accessible.
Thanks also to Eric Poehler and Sebastian Heath, for providing the PALP data that underlies our identification of spaces; to Sophie Hay for advice on the most recent finds; and to Ray Laurence, for advice on pretty much everything else.