Last Supper in Pompeii: what will your pupils get out of it?

With the new term looming like a superheated ash cloud, I got on an escape train to Oxford last Friday in order to see the Ashmolean’s new exhibition on Pompeii. The ideal opportunity, I thought, to reactivate my teacher-brain, generate some good content, and at the very least remind myself how to marinade snails in cardamom milk.

It’s called Last Supper in Pompeii, and it tells the ‘field to fork’ story of how the poor Pompeiians lived and died with their stomachs never far from their minds.

This is how it pans out:

1. Intro to Campania: communities, trade, geology
2. Growing stuff: fertile terrain= big wine economy (Bacchus land)
3. The poshness of Pompeii
4. Atrium & courtyard garden: how to impress guests
5. Triclinium: how to impress guests
6. Food= affirmation of life =reminder of mortality (carpe diem)
7. Kitchen life & Roman recipes
8. How did all this shape Roman Britain?

As I walked around (90 mins ideal), I had a few questions in mind:

• What’s the story being told here, and so what?
• What would a wary teenager find interesting?
• What myths about Roman life get busted?
• What on display is really quite cool?

What’s the story?

Why food and drink?

Well, why are there more Italian restaurants in London than British restaurants in Rome?

The Italians- like the Romans- have a stronger food culture than us, because their lovely climate encourages local, seasonal produce. That in turn encourages the sort of proud and distinctive food culture that attracts the taste buds of Brits and makes lasagne more popular than leek and potato soup. (Even though leeks, as it happens, were introduced to Britain by the Romans.)

The Bay of Naples, especially, was a foodie’s paradise- the Eden of ancient Italy. Here in abundance were plums, vines, seafood, onions, pulses and everything else that makes Italian cuisine so popular. The landowners and merchants grew fabulously rich and they weren’t ashamed to flash that around: lobster frescoes, garum-jar mosaics, statues of Bacchus sloshing Vesuvian wine over his pet panther.

Food production created the wealth that created the artefacts that celebrate elite Roman food culture.

What will engage the wary teenager?

The last comparable exhibition I went to was the British Museum’s I am Ashurbanipal: a blockbusting affair with animated relief carvings and towering walls of cuneiform. Last Supper is a humbler affair, but it contains some of the choicest finds from Pompeii, Paestum and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. It also reaches beyond war ‘n’ politics, presenting geography, botany, social hierarchy, horticulture, cuisine, religion and the high-end conservation happening in Oxford labs.

The Ashmolean offers a satisfyingly full portrait of the well-heeled Pompeiians and their preoccupations.

Will that engage your pupils for more than half an hour, though?

How could you extend that engagement to 60 or 90 minutes?

Here are some interesting questions which could help them reflect while they’re looking:

Why are so many of the food artefacts exhibited here so ornate? Why use the head of a goddess as the counterweight on a set of scales? Why don’t we put a reclining satyr on the rim of our cereal bowls?

The Instagram question: why do people today take food photos and share them, and is there a valid Roman equivalent?

What other modern parallels are available? Where else have communities grown rich by dominating and exploiting their geographical advantage? One info panel compared the kitchens of Pompeii to the below-stairs world of Downton Abbey. Is this analogy fair?

The Egypt question: why is there a pharoah hidden, Where’s Wally-style, on the main triclinium fresco? Why does Serapis with his grain-measure hat keep popping up?

If you were going to write a fable based on the fate of Pompeii, what would the fable be? You could read Horace’s The town mouse and the country mouse and ask how that informs their response to the exhibition.

It took me two hours to complete the course of the exhibition- taking notes, stopping to think- but I was reminded of how much richer an experience it is when you’re walking with questions in mind. It was a more reflective experience, and in fact I came out with these questions brewing:

1. Who coined all the wacky villa names, like House of the Golden Bracelet or House of the Centenary?
2. Is it possible to visit Villa B at Oplontis? (answer: yes)
3. How do you get the purple dye out of a murex shell?

What myths were busted?

This depends, of course, on what misconceptions you hold- and your pupils will perhaps have more than you. Two things struck me, however.

1. The mesh of interaction between Greek, Etruscan and Italic in Campania. I never knew, for instance, that the Roman habit of reclining to eat (on their left side- proven to help digestion) came from Near Eastern royal courts.
2. Women held raucous drinking parties too. There’s a vivid fresco of an all-female revel, complete with double-pipe player, back-slapping and sheepish servants. The new KS3 coursebook De Romanis also seeks to address the historical over-emphasis on male spheres.

Which exhibits really stood out?

What would make your top three?

Comment below and suggest ways to make potential school visits as active and engaged as possible!