Lindsey Davis - Vesuvius by Night

There were regular quarrels but even so, Larius suspected yet another birth was imminent. He had made things easier by installing his wife in rooms in Herculaneum, a town which was small and select and could be passed off as a good place to bring up children. He normally took jobs elsewhere. Close, but not too close. It stopped the squabbles. Since his return, he’d sobered up as far as he thought reasonable, took a grip on his life as far as he could be bothered. He accepted that what he wanted to do, all he wanted, was to paint.

The rest sometimes felt like a nightmare, but Larius conceded that the nightmare affected Ollia too. He was not blind to her situation. He was contrite, if not excessively. They got by. She believed he loved the children, which she thought must make him happy; ultimately true to her and to the infants they had foisted on the world, he himself never analysed his emotions. Happiness was a mental conceit; he dealt in spatial excellence. He loved the execution of his work and his power to provide pleasure even to strangers; that gave him an easy nonchalance. Within himself he was stable, relaxed, more or less content. Certainly he applied himself.

Horace.

Horace again – maybe a bit fanciful to someone who actually produced pictures.

Larius knew other poets but had absorbed a lot of Horace. For instance, that quote his filthy subtenant Nonius would choose:

Larius had grown up, but he still read. Ollia no longer did. During their adolescent courtship, they had bonded through endless discussions of elegiac love poems. The intellectual aspect of Larius was what attracted her, so much that it enabled him to supplant Vitalis the fisherboy, at Oplontis, even though he could show off a fine naked chest, toned muscles, a slick shoelace moustache; he was a virile hunk who obviously knew what to do with his body – which Larius in those days, being fourteen and painfully shy, did not. However, Larius liked reading and thinking; Ollia had thought him so very sophisticated and romantic.

Now, Ollia said she had no time for poems. Presumably it saved her many bitter feelings.

For such a fine artist there would always be employment. At the moment, Larius had this contract for a big building complex close to Pompeii’s main street. Work had been going on here for several years. The residential spaces were empty, with the garden currently in use as a materials store, though a busy street restaurant still operated on one corner and a large integral bakery remained in operation – a positive bread factory, with four querns trundled round and round by half a dozen mules, at least when the querns were working. They were currently idle due to earthquake damage.

The decoration scheme was to be modern yet not completely ludicrous. Larius understood clients. These would not want the most traditional style, which merely consisted of representing in paint other materials, mainly marble; nor would they take to the over-the-top fantastic grotesquery popularised by Nero. ‘But Larius Lollius, what is this supposed to be?…’

Larius himself loved swirling and smearing colours to create mock-marble, but his designs had to meet the desires and prejudices of the persons who paid. Fair enough. His task was to win them over. Make them believe they chose what in fact he had chosen to give them. So he kept faux marbling for a private hobby, nor did he try to force-feed customers the very latest ideas, the kind of crazy perspectives that drove critics to apoplexy.

Larius, who enjoyed a bit of theory when he had time, did his research; he had chortled over that curmudgeonly old architect Vitruvius letting off steam:

images which were used by the ancients are now tastelessly laid aside: monsters are painted rather than natural objects. For columns, reeds are substituted; for pediments, the stalks, leaves, and tendrils of plants. Candelabra are made to support representations of buildings, from whose summits many stalks appear to spring, with absurd figures thereon… such forms never did, and never can exist in nature. These new fashions have taken over, until for lack of competent judges, true art is little esteemed…

Let it out, Vitruvius old man! Try not to burst a blood vessel.

When in doubt, centre a panel with a finch, pecking at a fig. Just too cute. ‘Oh Larius Lollius, the little bird’s adorable!’

There you are. No self-respecting craftsman listened to an architect. Painters and the other trades had all been treated to far too much waffle and nonsense, told too many times to rip out good work on a whim, denigrated in front of a client, blamed for faults that the fancy-arsed arrogant twerp with the note-boards had brought about through his own ignorance. How much better any site would run with a project manager who understood logistics: install a clean latrine, supply beakers of hot mulsum, voice respect for proper skill and experience, pay wages in full and on time – then let your painters do their stuff.

Simplicity, legate.

In the current house, he and his team were now working on a grand reception hall. Pompeii was overrun with guilds, religious cults and political schemers who wanted to control the place. Campanians were diligent plotters. All the best homes had a large, formal reception space where ambitious owners could hold court. A meeting place for the funeral club to get tipsy. A super setting for tasteful soirées where civic votes were rigged.

This saloon would be an impressive one. Other reception rooms had already been painted in white, Larius’ favourite colour-scheme, divided up into panels by the kind of dainty candelabra and ditsy flower garlands that made Vitruvius and others shit splenetic bricks. Each tapestry of elegant sections contained one dramatic black panel at the centre, within which was a scene of polychrome fine art. Larius painted those himself, small pictures of historical scenes, architecture or rocky country views. He was famous for his seascapes. He based them on what he saw here in the Bay. Figures were never problematic for him either.

The team had already had fun on this project. Next door in the bakery, they had turned out conventional still-lives of fish, floating figures with spears or flowers, and couples lightly intertwined as they danced on air. There were scenes of people glimpsed through doorways. Clients always liked fake doorways, with their hints of mystery. Hylus had painted a superb brightly-coloured cockerel pecking at a half-devoured pomegranate beneath a shelf of untouched fruit. Hylus was really shaping up these days; he must have a good career ahead of him.

Their best effort was a dining-room. Larius had taken the lead on that. Stuck awkwardly between a stable and the flour mills, the bakers hired out the room commercially to bring in extra cash. In keeping with its purpose, it now held witty scenes of banqueting. The women had been made to look as if they were hired-in professionals, though in one scene these caterers were not professional enough; a serving maid was tottering and having to be supported, drunk. Meanwhile one of the young male guests had collapsed on his couch. In another picture all the girls looked as sloshed as their men; one seemed unaware she was upending her winecup, though in fairness, although one of the males was raising a drinking horn with panache, his crony had fallen back on the couch with one arm dangling. He was very, very far out of it, assuming he could feel anything at this point of the night…

‘Wishful thinking!’ Pyris had chortled. The wide-eyed young trainee, a gullible boy, was in constant awe of the lives he believed his elders enjoyed, based on their wild boasts. He ought to have known better: he went around with them, so had seen for himself that the whole team had fairly restrained habits. After a hard day, they were too tired for debauchery. It was the plasterers who drank themselves silly and went at it like rabbits with as many women as they could get their hands on. Plasterers, according to painters, were utterly notorious.