Rosie's Ramblings - The Bath House and the Evil Eye

The Bath House and the Evil Eye

The remains of the ancient city of Pompeii are located about 700 metres from the coast, but before the eruption it was a busting port town. This meant that many of the people in the city, at any given time, were foreigners, few of whom spoke the language. It was not unusual for there to be pictures of what was being sold instead of or accompanying the words on signs for better understanding. Such was also the case in a bath house on the very edge of the city, not far from the city gates.
Upon entering this bath house you will find yourself in what looks like a changing room. There is a spot high up on the wall where a shelf had been attached. Painted on the wall are images of some boxes, likely similar to the actual boxes that once resided there in which visitors could store their belongings. On the painted boxes are numbers and above each box there is a different picture of a rather sexually explicit scene. If you ignore the content of the illustrations, this is reminiscent of a the coat racks and cubbies found in most preschool and kindergarten classrooms. These young children cannot read and may not yet even know their numbers, so colorful images lead them to the correct spot to store their things. In much the same way, foreign visitors would have had a hard time remembering Latin labels or possibly even the numbers, so the pictures would help them to remember where they left their things.

There is something very interesting about these ancient Roman images that most will not notice at first glance. All of them represent either something unusual and bizarre, or something very taboo. There is one theory about why these specific types images were chosen for this particular space that I find very interesting, but to understand that you first need to know a little bit about the evil eye.
Belief in the evil eye dates to prehistoric times and is widespread throughout the world. The evil eye refers to the supernatural belief that one can be cursed by a malicious or spiteful look or stare from someone who is envious or jealous of you and wishing you harm. Plutarch, an ancient Greek philosopher provides an excellent description in book 5 of his Quaestiones Convivales when he said:
"Sorrow, covetousness, or jealousy makes us change color, and destroys the habit of the body; and envy more than any passion, when fixed in the soul, fills the body full of ill humors, and makes it pale and ugly; which deformities good painters in their pictures of envy endeavor to represent. Now, when men thus perverted by envy fix their eyes upon another, and these, being nearest to the soul, easily draw the venom from it, and send out as it were poisoned darts, it is no wonder, in my mind, if he that is looked upon is hurt."
While this seems to be an interesting, if not odd, take on the eyes being the window into the soul, for most people living in and visiting Pompeii, the evil eye was very real threat.

Now back to the bath house.
When you look closely at some of these images you will notice some interesting things. First the strange and bizarre. Here we see a woman on top of a man and, while this was certainly not uncommon, she appears to be excessively large and clearly dominating the encounter. And what's up with the ferret on her leg?

In the next picture, I am not sure what happened to the poor man's balls, but something is definitely not right, and yet he seems unconcerned and focused on the scroll he is reading.

The rest of these pictures are a bit more taboo. The first is an encounter between two women. Lesbians would have, at best, been puzzling to the ancient Romans and, at worst, unnatural and disgusting.

This next scene is pretty straightforward, its just a blow job. In this culture however, that was something a proper man did only with a prostitute behind closed doors., so this would most definitely be seen as taboo.

Next there are two group scenes. The first shows one man sandwiched between another man who is penetrating him and a woman whom he is penetrating. Second, we have a woman going down on a girl who is giving a man a blow job while he is penetrated from behind by another man. Again there is a blow job and again a bit of lesbian action going on, both taboo. And what about the two men having sex in each picture? The station of the men in these scenes in unclear. Are they all citizens having fun with each other? It is hard to say, but on the surface there does not appear to be any dominance or control being exerted by anyone over anyone else, so it could be assumed that they are all of equal station. Again, very taboo.

Finally a very purposeful depiction of a very taboo activity. In ancient Rome, a toga was seen as somewhat formal wear for male citizens. The man in this picture is shown fully clothed in a toga. Clearly this is a citizen, who by his culture's standards, is in the midst of having is mouth penetrated by the woman he is pleasuring. That was just not done and is probably the most taboo activity of them all.

All of these strange, disturbing, taboo paintings on the wall of the changing room, why does it matter? Well, in a changing room you are doing just that, changing, and other people will inevitable be watching you. If you are especially attractive, especially handsome, have a body others could envy, it could actually be dangerous. Remember the evil eye was often prompted by envy or jealousy, so this environment could be the perfect place for an attack. These pictures on the wall, however are likely to have lightened the mood. There would be snickering and laughter from those who viewed them and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to attack someone with the evil eye if you are both chuckling about the decor. There are some who theorize that these paintings were purposefully done this way to create this lighthearted locker room atmosphere and protect the patrons who would pass through the doors. Is this true? There is no way to know for sure, but it is certainly a fun way to look at it.

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