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The Vari House—an addendum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

A. J. Graham
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Extract

When I wrote the Excursus (Excursus on the Combed Ware: Evidence for Beekeeping) for the report on the Vari House, I was unfortunately compelled, through ignorance, to leave one obvious loose end. The so-called bronze beehive from Pompeii, discussed on p. 403 with n. 53, remained an enigma of which all that could be definitely said was that it was certainly not a beehive.

This object, it will be recalled, was published, and illustrated in a neat, measured drawing, in T. L. Donaldson's Pompeii (London, 1827) ii., 13 and plate opposite p. 12 (Fig. 1). As near as can be calculated from the indications of scale in Donaldson's plate, the dimensions of the vessel were as follows: height c. 0·61 m.; maximum diameter c. 0·63 m.; diameter of mouth c. 0·28 m.; of lid c. 0·56 m. The brief statement about it in the text was confined to the information that it was made of bronze, was found at Pompeii, and was in the Museum at Naples. All the later works which refer to it, or reproduce the drawing, seem to derive from Donaldson, and I was led to believe from its absence from nineteenth-century catalogues that it had disappeared from the Museum's collection long ago.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 73 , November 1978 , pp. 99 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1978

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References

1 Jones, J. E., Graham, A. J., and Sackett, L. H., ‘An Attic Country House below the Cave of Pan at Vari’, BSA lxviii (1973) 355–452.Google Scholar Also published separately, Thames and Hudson, London, 1974.

2 e.g. Pompeii (society for disseminating useful knowledge, London 1832, re-issued under the authorship of William Clarke, London 1846) ii, 79; Pompeii ed. Dyer, T. H. (a new edition of the preceding London, 1867), p. 301Google Scholar; Daremberg, et Saglio, , Dictionnaire des Antiquités etc. (Paris, 1877)Google Scholar, s.v. Apes (by Ch. Morel); Billiard, R.L'abeille et l'apiculture (Lille, 1900), p. 43Google Scholar, though the shape of the vessel is there strangely altered. The effects of the reproduction of this drawing and its identification in general works of reference can still be seen today. In White, K. D.'s Farm equipment of the Roman world (London, 1975) the vessel is still taken to be a beehive (p. 86).Google Scholar

3 The main argument of Hüsen's paper—that a Roman funerary plaque, illustrating a rural scene, includes representations of beehives—was refuted by Amelung, W., Die Sculpturen des vatikanischen Museums (Berlin, 1908), ii (text) 703–6, ii (plates) pl. 78.Google Scholar

4 “hae saginantur in doliis, quae etiam in villis habent multi, quae figuli faciunt multo aliter atque alia, quod in Jateribus eorum semitas faciunt et cavum, ubi cibum constituant, in hoc dolium addunt glandem aut nuces iuglandes aut castaneam. quibus in tenebris, cum operculum inpositum est in doleis, fiunt pingues.’ In the last sentence, which is corrupt in the MSS., I give and translate Keil's proposed correction (Cato, de agri cultura. … Varro, rerum rusticarum …, ed. H. Keil, Leipsig, 1884; see n. ad loc, pp. 281 f.).

5 Box 8, no. 17.

6 As Dareraberg and Saglio, ibid.; K. D. White, ibid.; cf. Hülsen, ibid.

7 It is a pleasurable duty to acknowledge here the most valuable help in locating examples of these vessels given to me by Miss Amanda Claridge. My thanks are also due to the staff of the Naples Museum, who kindly allowed me to examine the vessel, Inventory No. 24245, and gave me photographs of it. To my friend Mr. J. E. Jones I am grateful for helpful suggestions.