POMPEII. - Situated on the great coastal road from Naples toward southern Italy, it was founded by Oscan peoples of Campania near the lower valley of the Sarno. It was at first under the hegemony of the Greeks, who dominated the region from Cumae to the Punta della Campanella and who prevailed in political influence over the region.
Toward the end of the 5th century the Samnites subjugated it and gave it their Italic character. During the Hannibalic War P. remained neutral between Rome and Carthage, but in the Social War it took the side of the Italic peoples against Rome and was subjugated by Sulla and reduced to a Roman colony, with the title of Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum, without however losing its old regional spirit. In 63 A.D. it was severely damaged by an earthquake (Tacitus, Annals, XV-XXII) and in 79 it was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius described by Pliny the Younger (Epist., VI, 16, 20), who narrates the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder. The city was buried by a mound of ash and lapilli to a height of four to five meters. Its economic and maritime role was inherited by Stabiae and in the modern age by Torre Annunziata. The archaeological excavations, begun in 1748 under King Charles of Bourbon, received a great impulse in the first half of the 19th century and a rational organization from 1860 onward under the direction of Giuseppe Fiorelli and his successors, to the last of whom, Amedeo Maiuri, is owed the present revival of the appearance of the ancient city and the most recent and complete description of it.
Bibliography3 works
Nicola Turchi
POMPEII AND THE CHRISTIANS
The question of Christianity at P. has often been debated, not in the sense that there were Christians in it at the time of its catastrophe, but whether monumental traces of them have come down to us. In fact, one could not reasonably doubt that already in 79 P. was host to a certain number of Christians. St. Paul landed in the first months of 60 at Pozzuoli and found there a community of Christians, with whom he stayed about a week (Acts 28:14). This means that the new faith spread very quickly in the small towns of the Gulf of Naples, and therefore also at P.
But has the excavation of the city buried by Vesuvius yielded any tangible evidence of the existence of these Christians? Many indications have been gathered in this regard, but so faint that they hardly withstand somewhat rigorous criticism. Greater value seems to attach to a charcoal inscription seen "on the wall of a large room situated in the street bordering the Stabian Baths" and unfortunately long since vanished, in which, even if De Rossi's reading audi christianos saevos olores is not accepted, it is nevertheless difficult to deny that the name of the Christians was there.
Recentemente la questione fu rinfrescata dal ritrovamento di tre esemplari del famoso versus recurrens o criptogramma : hitherto believed to be the work of Christians. Naturally, the Christian character of this wordplay also began to be called into question, and the question of the Christians at P. remained substantially at the same point.
Bibliography6 works
Antonio Ferrua