Rats looting Roman villa entombed by Vesuvius highlight living conditions of slaves


Nick Squires
Sun, August 20, 2023 

The slaves room were discovered in a villa around 600 metres from Pompeii

Archaeologists excavating servants’ quarters in the remains of a sprawling Roman villa in Pompeii have found that slaves were not the only occupants of the cramped space – rats and mice were living beneath their beds.

Scientists have unearthed the entombed remains of two wood mice, an adult and a baby, inside an amphora that lay beneath one of the beds that were squeezed into the tiny room in the Civita Giuliana villa, which lay about 2,000ft (just over 600 metres) north of the walls of the ancient city.

In a crudely-made clay jug underneath another bed, they found the remains of a black rat, Rattus rattus – the species blamed for spreading the plague.

The rat seems to have hopped into the jug to feed on a “semi-liquid substance”, the exact nature of which remains unclear, archaeologists said.

The three rodents died, along with thousands of ancient Romans, when Pompeii was hit by a pyroclastic flow of hot ash and volcanic debris caused by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.

The animals are among a plethora of intriguing new discoveries that archaeologists have made in two remarkably well-preserved slaves’ rooms, which were unearthed in November 2021.

Painstaking analysis has revealed that the two small rooms included wooden cupboards, shelves on which rested cups and plates and other crockery, large baskets, amphorae and an oil lamp hung from a nail in the wall.

Experts also found wooden beds sprung with rope netting as well as a simple four-legged bench, a knife blade, a small scythe and the rectangular iron blade of a hoe. While organic materials such as wood and leather have long since decomposed, their imprints were conserved by the blanketing layers of volcanic ash.

Rattus rattus

The finding “suggests that the black rat was already widespread in the Pompeii area in the first century AD,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the archaeological site, wrote in a paper published on Sunday called, Of Mice and Men – new discoveries in the servants’ quarters of the Roman villa of Civita Giuliana near Pompeii.

Although rats and mice feature prominently in ancient Roman literature, fables and jokes, “the scale of ancient rodent infestation and its possible impact on the spread of diseases is still debated,” said Prof Zuchtriegel.

It would be an exaggeration to say that ancient Roman towns were crawling with rats, but “the presence of no less than three rodents suggests that the impact of mice and rats on ancient hygiene, disease control and storage conditions should not be underestimated”.

The detail and quality of the discoveries offer a “virtually photographic quality into the lives” of slaves in ancient Roman, people who barely appear in written sources, said Prof Zuchtriegel.

“When looking at the rodent-infested rooms at Civita Giuliana, we are invited to appreciate how in spite of everything, the people living here struggled to maintain a minimum of dignity and comfort.”

In a statement, the culture ministry added: “These details once again underline the conditions of precarity and poor hygiene in which the lower echelons of society lived during that time.”

Scientists have found no traces of bars on the windows of the slaves’ rooms or locks on the doors, suggesting they were not physically coerced to remain on the estate.

Subtle control

Control was exerted through more subtle means – allowing a male slave to take a female slave as his partner, for instance, forming a relationship that would then produce children.

That forged connections and a degree of reliance between the enslaved peoples and their owners, archaeologists said.

There was also a pecking order between slaves, in which some were elevated to the role of overseers and given special rights and privileges, said Prof Zuchtriegel.

Excavations at the Civita Giuliana villa were first carried out in the early 20th century but resumed in 2017, when Carabinieri police found that the site was being plundered by illegal diggers.

Archaeologists have made a series of remarkable discoveries at Pompeii in recent years, thanks to a €105 million (£89.8m) project funded by the EU dubbed Great Pompeii, from the remains of horses to a ceremonial chariot decorated with silver and bronze medallions and several human victims of the eruption of Vesuvius.

“What we are learning about the material conditions and social organisation of that era opens up new horizons for historical and archaeological studies,” said Gennaro Sangiuliano, the culture minister.

The discoveries made at Pompeii shed light on “notable aspects of daily life in antiquity,” he added.