Animals in Pompeii & Herculaneum

Caroline and fan with animals

Animals had lots of different "jobs" in the cities of Hercules.

What do I mean by the cities of Hercules? I mean Herculaneum – traditionally founded by the hero Hercules – and Pompeii, named after a big procession (pompa) mounted by the same hero to celebrate his capture of the Cattle of Geryon.

Because Hercules is linked with both Herculaneum and Pompeii, and because all but one of his labours involve animals, I thought it would be fun to link my talk about Animals in Pompeii and Herculaneum with the demi-god himself!

I explained how Hercules, son of Jupiter and a mortal woman, was always causing disasters because of his hot temper and had to atone for his crimes by performing twelve difficult tasks for a king named Eurystheus. The tasks mostly involved producing or killing a monstrous creature. And King Eurystheus mainly jumped in a large jar whenever Hercules appeared with the beast of the day!

By the end of my talk at the British Museum on Monday 27 May 2013, most children and adults in the audience learned all 12 labours (or tasks) of Hercules and also 13 categories of animals in ancient Roman cities.

Romans loved memory tricks, like the Roman House Memory system where you place the objects you want to remember around your house. But here’s the twist: you put those objects there in your imagination.

teaching the memory-rhyme system

Another memory system the Romans would have liked is the memory-rhyme system. The key is to find an object to stand for one, two, three etc by rhyming it. So two is ‘shoe’ because the ditty goes One, two buckle my shoe.

But don't make your objects dull. Instead of an ordinary brown leather man's shoe, make it a bright red lady's stiletto. Or a day-glo trainer with flashing lights. Or a fur-lined UGG boot.

For objects to be memorable they should be tangible, smellable, tastable, colourful and moving. Funny or bizarre objects also stick in the mind. So do extra large or rude images. Link one of these images with a boring fact and you will never forget it! 

Task number two was for Hercules to kill the snake-headed hydra, so we imagined him using a memorable shoe to knock off the hydra’s heads, rather than his club or sword. It seems convoluted but not only does this kind of memory-chain-linking help you remember items on a list backwards, forwards or out of order, but it increases your creativity.

 owl (or two love birds?) mosaic

In my talk at the British Museum, I took kids and parents through the process of memorizing twelve objects and the twelve tasks. More than that, each task served as a mnemonic for a class of animal. So task two-shoe-hydra reminds us that there is a whole class of animal that are hybrid creatures or mythological!

Seen as a list (below) it looks pretty dull, but when you are teasing out answers from imaginative kids, using fun illustrations and throwing in gruesome facts like what to do when an owl flies into your house, it is a fun learning experience.

1 = bun = lion = entertaining animals
2 = shoe = hydra = mythological animals
3 = tree = hind (deer) = huntable animals
4 = door = boar = sacrificial animals
5 = hive = stables = working animals
6 = sticks = birds = augury animals
7 = heaven = Cretan bull = sacred/symbolic animals
8 = gate = man-eating mares = transport animals
9 = wine = Amazon’s belt = wearable animals
10 = hen = cattle = edible (food) animals
11 = [pillars of Hercules] = golden apples = protective animals
12 = delve (to dig) = Cerberus = guard animals

three mosaics of guard dogs

Guard animals led me to the three famous dog mosaics found in the cities of Hercules and also the famous plaster cast of the space left by a chained dog who could not flee the eruption.

cast of Pompeian guard dog

It was sad he died, but also happy for now he is one of the most famous dogs in the history of the world.

And maybe some of his puppies DID survive and their descendants haunt the ruins of  to this day.

When I went to Italy a few months ago I saw a posh city dog near our hotel, and the next day spotted her scruffy country cousin roaming the ruins of Paestum. They could both be descendants of the watchdog from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii (the third dog in the mosaics above).

descendants of a Pompeian watchdog

Wandering the almost deserted site of Pompeii one January morning, a cheeky white dog with a pine-cone distracted everybody from our illustrious guide (Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill) who was telling us about the amphitheatre. Other friends of mine have told tales of being shepherded around the cities of Hercules by the dogs of Vesuvius.

This reminded me of the final category of animals in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pets! 

Yes, then just as today, children and adults loved animals as pets. They loved dogs, birds, even carp, for whom they bought earrings! Perhaps the only animal NOT thought of as a pet that we have today was the cat. 

After my talk, while I was signing copies of my Roman Mysteries books, I asked some of the children if they could tell me a random labour of Hercules: number 8, for example, or number 5... Not all of them could do it, but I’ll wager there are a few who will amaze their parents and teachers over the next few days.

Caroline Lawrence writes history-mystery books for children aged 6 and up. For more information visit her website or her Orion Books Author Page. And to see how to make animal noises in Latin, go HERE to download a powerpoint show by kids from Moreton Hall Suffolk for the Minimus Website!

Hylas by Waterhouse

I often steal plots from Greek myths. After all, their authors are long-dead and can't sue me. For my ninth Roman Mystery, The Colossus of Rhodes, I used the Voyage of Jason and his Argonauts as the structure for my Roman detectives' search for a criminal mastermind.

In the myth, Jason is on a quest for the Golden Fleece and he has assembled many heroes on board his ship the Argo. For example Hercules and his special friend Hylas, a beautiful youth.

In The Colossus of Rhodes, I get Flavia and her friends match the crew of their boat, the Delphina, with the crew of the mythical Argo. Here is the list Flavia and her friends compose:

Lupus the ship-owner is like Jason, the Brave Hero on a Quest
Flavia Gemina is like Atalanta, the speedy Heroine
Jonathan would like to be Peleus, a Hero and father of Achilles
Nubia has agreed to be Hercules, because both wear lionskins
Captain Geminus (a twin) is Castor, Pollux's mortal Brother
Aristo (a talented musician) is Orpheus, whose Lyre tamed Beasts
Bato (former junior magistrate) is Mopsus, a Wise Soothsayer
Flaccus (aristocratic snob) is Acastus, arrogant son of King Pelias
Zetes (Flaccus's slave-boy) is Zetes, the Hero who could fly
Silvanus (handsome youth) is Hylas, young Squire of Hercules
Atticus (old and Greek) can be Argus, who built the Argo
Punicus (Phoenician helmsman) is Tiphys, Helmsman on the Argo
(pp 24-25)

In my book, Flavia makes Silvanus, a handsome Ostian youth, correspond to Hylas. This could be bad news for Silvanus. The original story of Hylas goes like this:

Jason and his crew have anchored somewhere on the coast of Bithynia to take on water. Hercules and his boyfriend Hylas go off to fetch water but Juno, Hercules's great enemy, sees a chance to torment him. She makes sure that Hercules and Hylas are separated. She then tells a beautiful huntress nymph called Dryope that there is a handsome boy in the woods who would make a perfect husband. His name is Hylas.


The poet Gaius Valerius Flaccus (played by Ben Lloyd-Hughes above) tells the story like this:

Dryope the huntress nymph flushes a swift deer out of the trackless woods and tricks Hylas into pursuing it, away from Hercules. The stag leads him far away to a place where a bright fountain gushes forth. With a single bound the deer leaps over the pool and is gone. Disappointed, the handsome youth finally stops his pursuit. As sweat bathes his limbs and his chest rises and falls, he greedily sinks beside the pleasant stream. The dappled light that shifts and plays upon the lake shows the gleam of his beautiful body. He does not notice the nymph's shadow or the perfumed scent of her hair or the splash of water as she rises up to embrace him. He cries out to Hercules for help as she throws her smooth arms around his neck, but in vain. Hercules is far away and cannot hear him, and the lovely nymph she draws him down into the water, her strength helped by his falling weight.

In the painting by Waterhouse (below) the painter makes the scene much more watery and adds six more nymphs, bringing their total number to a mystical seven. We see Hylas with his water jug, entranced by their beauty. If you go to the Waterhouse exhibit at the Royal Academy, be sure to invest an extra £3 in the audio guide. The guide tells us that the nymphs eyes are black with desire and that the exchange of looks between Hylas and the head nymph Dryope is almost mesmeric. She is hypnotising him, bewitching him, seducing him. She wants to draw him out of the world, into a life of watery pleasure. He is captivated by her beauty and he is unconsciously leaning forward. At any moment he will plunge into the water.


According to some accounts, Hylas falls in and drowns. According to others he stays with the nymphs to love them and be loved. But in every case, Hercules and the Argonauts never see him again.

In my book, the young Ostian crewmember named Silvanus goes for water on an island and never comes back. Was he also taken by nymphs? Or did something more sinister occur?

Maybe it's a coincidence, but Waterhouse loved water. It appears in at least half the paintings in the exhibition. He also liked to use symbols. For example, long hair. To Waterhouse, long hair was a symbol of feminine seductiveness. Check out his painting of 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'. She is wrapping her luscious locks around the neck of a handsome, hapless knight. His armour will not protect him against her perfumed tresses.

Notice, too, that the handsome young model Waterhouse uses is the same one who posed for two other archetypes of Greek male beauty: Narcissus and Adonis. I think his is also the head of Orpheus, a painting not in this particular exhibition.


Back to Hylas and the Nymphs. See how that one nymph to the right of Dryope is seductively fluffing her hair? And the nymph between Hylas and Dryope holds something in her hands. Pearls. You don't notice them until you're standing right in front of the painting. She seems to be offering the pearls to Hylas. Or is it something more sinister? Waterhouse knew (and the commentary tells us) that pearls were thought to be the tears of drowned men.

Run, Hylas! Run!

N.B. J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite was an exhibition at London's Royal Academy in 2009. It has now finished.