Recent excavations at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii have revealed that some enslaved people, despite being considered merely ‘talking instruments’, were fed better food than ordinary people, the Italian Ministry of Culture has confirmed.
Evidence from a large villa in Civita Giuliana, a northern suburb, showed amphora jugs of broad beans and a generous bowl of fruit – pears, apples and sherbets – found on the first floor of a servants’ quarters.
This is in stark contrast to the living conditions of the slaves on the ground floor: 16 square meter cells full of rats, often housing up to three people.
Archaeologists believe that this improved diet was a deliberate strategy to maintain productivity.
The ministry emphasized the social irony by stating: “It could therefore happen that the slaves of the villas around Pompeii were better fed than many formally free citizens, whose families did not have the bare minimum to live on and who were therefore forced to beg from the city’s notables.”
Ordinary working-class people typically relied on a simple wheat-based diet.
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, concluded that these findings “expose the absurdity of the ancient slave system,” which dehumanized individuals as “speaking instruments.”
The once thriving city of Pompeii, near Naples, and its surroundings were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, but its remains have been preserved after being submerged for centuries under a thick blanket of ash and lava.
Earlier this year, an investigation into recent excavations at the archaeological site revealed the last moments of some of Pompeii’s residents.
A scene discovered in the House of Elle and Frisso – named after the mythological painting found in one of the rooms – has provided insight into how the house’s inhabitants desperately tried to save themselves from the historic eruption in 79 AD.
In an attempt to escape the volcanic ash piling up over the city, the victims had tried to take refuge in a bedroom and locked the door with a bed.
Archaeologists were able to reproduce a cast of the bed after identifying the shape of the wooden frame in the solidified ash.
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