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FEAR AND HEALING: SENECA, CAECILIUS IUCUNDUS, AND THE CAMPANIAN EARTHQUAKE OF 62/63 ce

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2019

Christopher Trinacty
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The earthquake of 62/63 ce was a catastrophic event for Pompeii and Campania. The destruction and death toll were extensive and it is clear that the city of Pompeii was still recovering and rebuilding when the eruption of Vesuvius happened. This article takes into consideration the mental and emotional damage that the earthquake caused and the way in which Seneca and the archaeological record help us to perceive strategies of consolation and therapy. Seneca discusses this earthquake in Book 6 of his Naturales quaestiones and hopes to lead his reader from the shock of the earthquake to a more comprehensive understanding of the physical causes of the tremor. The cultural memory of events not witnessed directly (such as Seneca's write-up of the Pompeii earthquake) makes us all survivors and ‘turn[s] history into a memory in which we can all participate’. If trauma ‘spreads via language and representation’, Seneca wants to limit what exactly is traumatic about this event and employs his creative rhetoric to do so. His account demonstrates how Stoic physics and ethics are connected and moves the reader from his or her fear of earthquakes to the fear of death at the root of the anxiety. Seneca carefully alters the valence of certain terms as well as selected memories of the earthquake to encourage his reader to transcend his or her fear and view earthquakes as natural occurrences, not anomalies to be dreaded. He does this through strategies identified in modern trauma theory as useful for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and this article investigates how contemporary trauma theory can help us understand aspects of Seneca's remedy. Seneca's repetitions of certain events and terminology works to reassess and renovate them from a philosophical angle – in essence it turns potential ‘flashbacks’ and ‘triggers’ into beneficial sites of memory and the means of recovery. Survivors often relive the trauma again and again – Seneca's work alludes to this, but now makes the victim actively revise how to make such iterations part of the recovery.

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Research Article
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Greece & Rome , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , April 2019 , pp. 93 - 112
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

The earthquake of 62/63 ce was a catastrophic event for Pompeii and Campania.Footnote 1 The destruction and death toll were extensive and it is clear that the city of Pompeii was still recovering and rebuilding when the eruption of Vesuvius happened.Footnote 2 This article takes into consideration the mental and emotional damage that the earthquake caused and the way in which Seneca and the archaeological record help us to perceive strategies of consolation and therapy. Seneca discusses this earthquake in Book 6 of his Naturales quaestiones and hopes to lead his reader from the shock of the earthquake to a more comprehensive understanding of the physical causes of the tremor.Footnote 3 The cultural memory of events not witnessed directly (such as Seneca's write-up of the Pompeii earthquake) makes us all survivors and ‘turn[s] history into a memory in which we can all participate’.Footnote 4 If trauma ‘spreads via language and representation’,Footnote 5 Seneca wants to limit what exactly is traumatic about this event and employs his creative rhetoric to do so. His account demonstrates how Stoic physics and ethics are connected and moves the reader from his or her fear of earthquakes to the fear of death at the root of the anxiety.Footnote 6 Seneca carefully alters the valence of certain terms as well as selected memories of the earthquake to encourage his reader to transcend his or her fear and view earthquakes as natural occurrences, not anomalies to be dreaded. He does this through strategies identified in modern trauma theory as useful for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and this article investigates how contemporary trauma theory can help us understand aspects of Seneca's remedy.Footnote 7 Seneca's repetitions of certain events and terminology works to reassess and renovate them from a philosophical angle – in essence it turns potential ‘flashbacks’ and ‘triggers’ into beneficial sites of memory and the means of recovery.Footnote 8 Survivors often relive the trauma again and again – Seneca's work alludes to this, but now makes the victim actively revise how to make such iterations part of the recovery.

Next, I will turn to the famous reliefs found in the home of L. Caecilius Iucundus (V.1.26).Footnote 9 These reliefs depict the earthquake and its impact on certain important monuments of the city, as well as a more abstract representation of religious stability. As part of the family's lararium, it is clear that they can symbolize an act of gratitude to the gods, but they are also a visual reminder of what has passed and act to normalize this event. In its mnemonic function,Footnote 10 it replicates much of what Seneca does in the Naturales quaestiones: namely, it is another way to control the memory of the disaster and refocus the reader/observer from being a passive casualty of the earthquake to a more active and informed participant who, in the words of Gareth Williams, can achieve a ‘cosmic viewpoint’ of this incident.Footnote 11

In essence, this article considers the responses of two contemporaries to the trauma of the earthquake and, in their responses, one can view how they share certain coping mechanisms that are in line with modern trauma therapy. Both activate the memory of the earthquake only to scrub the painful memories by placing them in new contexts. While the contexts (philosophy for Seneca, religion for the family of Caecilius Iucundus) are broadly different, the way they ask the reader/observers to consider and reconsider the text/image creates an active respondent who can understand the earthquake as part of the larger continuum of the natural world.

Senecan consolation and PTSD

The sixth book of Seneca's Naturales quaestiones begins by describing the recent earthquake and the mirabilia that occurred as part of the earthquake: cities such as Pompeii and Herculaneum suffered the most but, in addition, ‘a flock of hundreds of sheep was killed, and statues were split apart; afterward some people wandered around in a state of shock and deranged’ (sexcentarum ovium gregem exanimatum, et divisas statuas; motae post hoc mentis aliquos atque inpotentes sui errasse; Q Nat. 6.1.3).Footnote 12 Seneca then spends the majority of the book composing a detailed doxography, which analyses the various philosophical views on earthquakes,Footnote 13 before returning to the question of how such information will help comfort the fearful survivors (as well as the possibly shaken readers of the book).

Throughout the book Seneca stresses the importance of investigation and of paying close attention not only to the natural worldFootnote 14 but also to the language and structure that he uses to describe that world. His doxography is based around the elements (does water cause earthquakes? fire? air?) and Tutrone has recently stressed how this format assists one of Seneca's primary goals, ‘to create a web of intertexts and re-interpretations, a web covering both the field of scientific knowledge and that of literary memory’.Footnote 15 When Seneca's narrative returns to the same events of the Campanian earthquake near the conclusion of this book we should take note of such conspicuous ring composition. Such a rhetorical device inspires the reader to re-evaluate these phenomena, as well as to re-evaluate the language used to describe the trauma of the survivors. After making one's way through the book, the sheep that died should not be considered a wonder (nec id mirum est; Q Nat. 6.27.2) and it did not happen because of fear (timore; Q Nat. 6.27.1), but rather because of pestilential air that was emitted during the earthquake.Footnote 16 Likewise, one should not wonder at the statue split in half (statuam divisam non miror; Q Nat. 6.30.1), especially as Seneca has given example after example of the way in which the earth itself splits open (in partes divisa discedat; Q Nat. 6.4.1 [see also 6.14.1, 6.18.3]). Even his deployment of one word, in this case forms of dividere (‘to split’), can point to the larger lesson that he aims to teach in this book and the iteration that will lesson one's trauma. Seneca consciously and creatively recasts the horror and fear of these ‘wonders’ into something normal and expected.Footnote 17

His return to the survivors of the earthquake and their traumatic experience occurs in the chapter between these marvels. He writes (Q Nat. 6.29.1–3):

Nam aliquos insanis attonitisque similes discurrere fecit metus, qui excutit mentes, ubi privatus ac modicus est: quid? ubi publice terret…quid mirum est animos inter dolorem et metum destitutos aberrasse? Non est facile inter magna mala consipere. Itaque levissima fere ingenia in tantum venere formidinis ut sibi exciderent. Nemo quidem sine aliqua iactura sanitatis expavit, similisque est furentis quisquis timet: sed alios cito timor sibi reddit, alios vehementius perturbat et in dementiam transfert. Inde inter bella erravere lymphatici, nec usquam plura exempla vaticinantium invenies quam ubi formido mentes religione mixta percussit.

A number of people ran off as though mad or stupefied: this was the result of fear, which causes mental disturbance when it is private and moderate; so what happens when there is terror on a public scale?…is it surprising that minds deprived of support in the midst of grief and fear became deranged? It is not easy to stay sane in the midst of great disasters. So the weakest temperaments generally reach such a pitch of terror that they lose their heads.Footnote 18 No one can panic without some loss of sanity, and anyone who is afraid resembles a madman. But fear soon restores some people to their normal selves, while it disturbs others more deeply and drives them mad. That is why in time of war people wander around distraught, and nowhere will you find more cases of people prophesying than when panic blended with religion has attacked their minds.

As with the split statues and the sheep, so with the bewildered and panicked survivors, Seneca questions if this is truly surprising (quid mirum est; Q Nat. 6.29.1). In doing so, he also makes these emotional reactions parallel the physical effects of the earthquake. This passage strongly recalls language found at earlier moments in Book 6. In his opening, Seneca claims that ‘we should investigate the causes [of earthquakes]…comfort needs to be found for the fearful, and their great terror needs to be eradicated’ (quorum ut causas excutiamus…quaerenda sunt trepidis solacia, et demendus ingens timor; Q Nat. 6.1.3–4). That comfort can be found in reason: ‘But I regard this fact itself as a comfort, and a very powerful one, since incurable fear rescues the foolish. Reason can dispel terror from the wise’ (ego vero hoc ipsum solacii loco pono, et quidem valentissimi, quando quidem sine remedio Footnote 19 timor stultis est: ratio terrorem prudentibus excutit; Q Nat. 6.2.1).Footnote 20 These different translations of excutere (‘to dispel, to investigate’) indicate how inquiry and investigation can also act to dispel fear. Seneca repeats the same language later in this section, when he restates the survivors’ maddened wandering (quid mirum est animos inter dolorem et metum destitutos aberrasse; Q Nat. 6.29.1Footnote 21) which fear caused (qui excutit mentes; Q Nat. 6.29.1). The repeated use of excutere here models how Seneca wants us to pay attention to his language and exercise our ratio (‘reason’).

Seneca continues to focus on the connections between fear and madness, stating: ‘whoever fears is like a madman’ (similisque est furenti quisquis timet; Q Nat. 6.29.2). Fear becomes the primary emotion that needs to be eradicated and the fear of earthquakes or the distressing aftermath of an earthquake is conflated with the fear of death.Footnote 22 But death is also a refuge from all evils, including fear. Seneca wants to encourage those racked with fear to understand this, and his language highlights that the fearful actually desire death: ‘Death is a law of nature; death is the tribute and duty of mortals, and the remedy for every suffering. Anyone who is afraid is longing for it’ (mors naturae lex est, Footnote 23 mors tributum officiumque mortalium malorumque omnium remedium est: optavit illam quisquis timet; Q Nat. 6.32.12).Footnote 24

Through the contemplation of nature and study of the liberal arts (including this workFootnote 25) one becomes both wiser and braver: ‘The mind gains strength solely from liberal studies and from the contemplation of nature’ (non enim aliunde animo venit robur quam a bonis artibus, quam a contemplatione naturae; Q Nat. 6.32.1), and will come to the conclusion that death is what fearful individual actually desires. In this section we can see how Seneca repeats language (forms of the verbs excutere and errare) or phrases (quisquis timet) to lead the reader through the teaching he offers in the book.Footnote 26 Like a good teacher, these repetitions are meant to hammer home important points, but (also like a good teacher) it is not repetition for the sake of repetition, but rather to enrich and question the assumptions and learning already acquired.Footnote 27 The conclusion features a call for daily meditation, much as his letters or Dialogi do,Footnote 28 but now this can be put into a larger context of understanding the natural world (Q Nat. 6.32.12: hoc adfigamus animo, Footnote 29 hoc nobis subinde dicamus ‘moriendum est’; ‘Let us imprint this on our minds, let us constantly say this to ourselves: “We must die”.’). Memory is the key for the reading technique and the general hermeneutics of Seneca's account. Montiglio remarks, ‘Seneca's conception of memory can be termed “voluntaristic”, because it is grounded in the conviction that memories, their use and their effects can be governed by the will.’Footnote 30 The reader should recognize that Seneca is manipulating the language to lead the reader to a more perfect understanding of the unity of the Stoic universe (in which physics, ethics, and logic – in this case the rhetoric of his account – are bound together to create and define natura). Seneca ultimately utilizes the trauma that the earthquake survivors experience as a way to indicate the benefits of learning about humanity's place in the world.Footnote 31

Modern trauma theory can help us to understand how Seneca's account of the earthquake touches upon cognitive behavioural therapy.Footnote 32 Trauma theory stresses the importance of survivor accounts and the cultural memory that is created by witnessing, testimony, and listening. Recent psychiatric work on earthquake survivors has stressed the ubiquity of acute stress disorder (ASD) as well as PTSD on populations that have suffered earthquakes.Footnote 33 The initial shock and awe will dissipate and a path to recovery is opened by constant deliberate reassessment of the past trauma. Through his text, Seneca is actively trying to (re)formulate the memories about and around this earthquake and encourage the reader to define the event and control the trauma.Footnote 34 Trauma theory encourages us to read Seneca's intratextual repetitions as something more than his typical stylistic flourishes. Indeed, they are much of the therapy and they are purposeful. The reader is meant to notice these repetitions and remark how the language and imagery is re-contextualized in settings that promote a different reaction as the reader progresses in the work. Reading – active close reading – becomes therapeutic as the reader acknowledges the way that Seneca has reconstituted frightening marvels into something that accords with de rerum natura.Footnote 35 The cool water of the doxography and the rehabilitated conception of death as natural law will douse the fevered reaction to an earthquake. The book, in a sense, can represent the give and take of a therapeutic dialogue, with Seneca as a therapist aiming to alter the reactions of the patient's troubled mind.Footnote 36 The traumatic event needs to be brought up, again and again, in order to place it in beneficial contexts for recovery, whether those be the various doxographical explanations or Seneca's own ethical exposition of intratextual echoes.

One notable absence from Seneca's account is the dead and the dying. He does not write about children crushed by falling walls, husbands looking for their wives in the rubble, the maimed, the bloodied, the crushed, and the impaled.Footnote 37 If trauma is a ‘wound’ (the original etymology), then Seneca concentrates on healing that wound, not describing its horrific details. The absence of carnage is itself a way of creating the cultural memory of the earthquake and is important for Seneca's worldview. Although trauma may be ‘outside the range of usual human experience’,Footnote 38 Seneca's normalization of earthquakes will help to assuage this experience or, at least, to provide a preferred perspective on this trauma. When Seneca manipulates the fear of earthquakes into the fear of death, he redefines the concept of trauma to make it more universal.Footnote 39 Memories of such a moment will be preserved through literature and this book stresses how Seneca controls the memorialization of the earthquake and uses it to prove that the shock and derangement of trauma can be remedied by a steady diet of Stoic physics rendered in artistic Latin prose.

Household religion and trauma relief

Seneca's description of the earthquake, however, is reported second hand from the information provided by eye-witnesses and framed in such a way to emphasize the natural order of this sublime event. For those who experienced the events first hand, the daily struggle to rebuild and recover resulted in a range of coping mechanisms. Most of these are lost to us, but there is evidence of evacuees moving elsewhere, as well as buildings being refitted to house survivors.Footnote 40 One memorial to the earthquake is the lararium of Caecilius Iucundus.Footnote 41 Flower has recently stressed the individuality present in household shrines because of the grouping of figurines, painted details, and shape of the shrine, and this is probably one of the most exceptional.Footnote 42 In the atrium of the house stands an altar with a unique sculptural programme which dramatically represents the earthquake on the south side (figure 1).Footnote 43

Figure 1.

Earthquake relief on altar of Caecilius Iucundus. Courtesy of the American Academy in Rome, Photographic Archive.

This relief depicts the earthquake toppling the Temple of Jupiter in the forum, the equestrian statues with legs akimbo, and the preliminaries of a sacrifice taking place (5 February 62 ce was a festival day, so some have seen this as a freeze-frame of the actual sacrifice to the Pompeiian lares as well as Augustus).Footnote 44 There are certain questions – are those equestrian statues or actual riders trying to keep their balance and throwing their legs about to do so, and where, exactly, is the altar meant to be?Footnote 45 What is clear, however, is that the sculptural programme on this altar evokes the earthquake for all viewers and participants in the household cult. As Toner nicely puts it, ‘Managing to find some kind of meaning to the disaster aids recovery, as does finding someone to blame for it, both of which can be neatly achieved by attributing it to God's will.’Footnote 46 How does this lararium negotiate the results of the earthquake and the trauma suffered by the household? I believe that looking at this relief with its companion relief (on the east side) and placing them in the context of memorialization and the psychological stress caused by trauma can help us understand part of the motivation behind and meaning of these unique works.

The lararium is immediately to the left as one enters the atrium, and the first panel one would face is that of the earthquake upsetting the Temple of Jupiter. Petronius likewise describes how visitors would immediately see the lares upon entering the house of Trimalchio (29.8). The sightlines are important for understanding how to conceptualize the public nature of this altar and the way it speaks not only to household members but also to the larger public.Footnote 47 In the atrium of Caecilius Iucundus, this ornate altar shares the south wall with the money chest, and anyone gazing from left to right would eventually reach the bust of Caecilius Iucundus outside the tablinum (‘office’).Footnote 48 The position matters for the sense of place that such shrines intend:

A pious Roman…would aspire to a good relationship with deities of the natural world, who were imagined as already inhabiting spaces before these were occupied by men, as well as with the gods of his home, his lar(es) and his family gods (penates).Footnote 49

For one looking at this panel and ‘reading’ it, there is a stark difference between the rippling damage and disorientation of the left half, with its depiction of the crumbling north side of the forum, and the placid and ordered sacrifice on the right. The altar still stands with solid vertical alignment and the bull sacrifice looks like it could proceed as scheduled. Obviously, one can read panic into the bull's stone eyes, but it seems to me that this evokes the safety and solace granted by religion.Footnote 50 The central position of religious accoutrements such as an urceus (pitcher) for wine and a patera (sacrificial plate), and the observer's tendency to ‘read’ this relief from left to right, would encourage the transformation from disorder to order. The relief's depiction of a sacrifice to the lares should evoke the very lararium itself before which the observer stands, even if the relief shows the more formal sacrifice that is part of the Compitalia.Footnote 51 Peterson remarks on the depiction of ritual implements (such as the knife and axe) on an altar:

While the altar itself may be a locus for such transient ritual, its imagery captures the essence of those exchanges with the divine, as if to commemorate them for perpetuity. In this regard, altars – funerary and civic – may be understood to function, at one and the same time, as repositories of ritual action and as memorials of those actions.Footnote 52

Ritual action is embodied in stone while ritual action is taking place by the observer who approaches the lararium of Caecilius Iucundus. If it is true that Caecilius died in the earthquake,Footnote 53 then the memorialization gains additional significance, as the man represented may evoke Caecilius himself, whose bust is also in the atrium (see figures 2 and 3 and compare those ears!).Footnote 54 He is the only human figure in the relief and, here, is alive and well (one may think back to Seneca's description of the earthquake and the lack of carnage there).

Figure 2.

Bust of Caecilius Iucundus. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.

Figure 3.

Detail of sacrifice from altar of Caecilius Iucundus. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.

There is a parallelism created between the figure on the altar, the bust of Caecilius, and the individual viewing the altar and participating in the ritual. This scene evokes the continuity between this artistic site of memory and the survivors who tend to the rituals for the lares.Footnote 55 Their pietas will ultimately be rewarded.Footnote 56 Flower comments on how participants in the cult enter into a sort of ritual reverie and how their experience is moderated by the memories:

A person making a gift or libation on an altar…would not simply make an offering addressed to a cult image. Rather, this worshipper would be seeing and probably claiming some share in the libation made by a genius to the lares, within an ideal ritual time and holy space. He or she would also be reminded of the full range of cult actions.Footnote 57

They are carrying on the tradition, overseen by the former pater familias and dominus of the home, in an opulent atrium that displays its wealth conspicuously; it is clear that the domestic gods have blessed the home in the past and their current worship will ensure future prosperity as well.

For the viewer, however, this is not the end of the ‘story’, and to continue to the other side of the altar leads to further contemplation. The repetition of certain objects, almost like the anaphora of words in Latin poetry from one line to the next or Seneca's own intratextual repetitions, ties the earthquake relief to the geometric relief on the east side of the altar. The sacrificial axe and pitcher are found at the far right edge of the sacrifice scene and the far left edge of the geometric pattern and their repetition encourages the observer to see these two sides tied together, although one is more figurative and the other more abstract (figures 4 and 5). It is a bold juxtaposition that gains significance from the connections created by the objects depicted.

Figure 4.

Altar of Caecilius Iucundus, east face. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.

Figure 5.

Detail of east face of altar. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.

Here we find geometric patterns with flowers, paterae, sacrificial vessels, food, leaves, insects, even a lizard.Footnote 58 Some scholars have postulated that these objects have religious significance and I agree that these could represent some of the humble daily offerings that might have been given to the household gods.Footnote 59 The flora and fauna are placed within the geometric order of the pattern, which indicates the way in which the natural world can be ordered as part of this religious ritual.Footnote 60 It is important to stress the ubiquity of worship of the domestic gods, who would be honoured on a daily basis. As Harmon states:

On the Kalends, the Nones and the Ides, and on family anniversaries (Cato Agr. 143.2), the hearth was dressed with flowers, and the sacred fire received offerings of perfume, wine and cakes. It was not only on these days, but on every day that the domestic gods enjoyed the worship of the family.Footnote 61

The geometric pattern shows a sense of order and stability: all the right angles of the various rectangles and squares and the regularity of three objects in the ‘L’-shaped sections and one in the squares and rectangles. The repetitions of offerings found in the blank spaces only adds to the sense of regularity. The intersections and overlapping of the figures creates a strong lattice-like mesh that shows not only harmony and organization but also controlled symmetry and design. This symbolizes the results of regular devotion to the household gods, and the reliefs, in tandem, create a sense of lawfulness through devotion and continual acts of religio.Footnote 62 By coming to the altar day after day, week after week, year after year, the survivors will find that the earthquake will signify a mere moment of terror, being part of larger continuum. As the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk postulates:

Traumatic memories are the unassimilated scraps of overwhelming experiences, which need to be integrated with existing mental schemes, and be transformed into narrative language. It appears that, in order for this to occur successfully, the traumatized person has to return to the memory often in order to complete it.Footnote 63

The reliefs, read in tandem, represent a return to the events of the earthquake and a reckoning with the earthquake through the orderly sacrifices to the household gods. Caruth claims that ‘trauma is not simply an effect of destruction but also, fundamentally, an enigma of survival’.Footnote 64 The survivors of the earthquake built this altar and commissioned this relief to be part of the altar in order to start to comprehend what may have seemed to be an incomprehensible event. Even this earthquake can be put into a larger cosmic context and controlled through contemplation of the iconography of the altar. While memory of the earthquake will be evoked, its trauma will be lessened through this representation and the repetition of daily rites to the household gods.

Conclusion: iteration and contemplation

Seneca's shell-shocked survivors of the earthquake needed to move beyond their speechless wandering and understand that what had happened was a sublime manifestation of natura. If death should result, even death itself is a puny concern for those who have attained this enlightened point of view.Footnote 65 His book on earthquakes models the way in which learning, specifically philosophical education which is enacted in the very reading of the book, will help one to move beyond the initial petrified terror. Physics informs ethics. Active redefinition of terms, as well as the ‘miraculous’ memories of the earthquake (the deceased sheep and ruptured statue), will aid in recovery and come to check further suffering. Ring composition and intratextual repetitions are not just rhetorical flourishes but work together to help the reader process and, ultimately, purge the trauma.

Seneca's strategies, informed by Stoicism and his own artful literary style, can be seen to converge with those of the iconographic programme of the lararium of Caecilius Iucundus. These points of convergence (normalizing the event, the larger order of natura) must be clarified by points of divergence as well. On the lararium we can see one of the ways in which survivors of the earthquake have attempted to make peace with the catastrophe: not through philosophy, but through religious devotion. The household is stable. Personal household religion (and not the ruined public temple) will create the larger context for this catastrophe, one framed by personal piety. Such nods to state or personal religio, for Seneca, are rubbish.Footnote 66

Both Naturales quaestiones Book 6 and the lararium fashion the memory of the earthquake, but for one salvation lies in the proper worship of the gods, whereas the other finds solace in philosophy and meditation on mortality. The east-facing relief with the lattice pattern and various representations of animals, insects, and offerings to the household gods provides an alternative view of the cosmos in which the answer to the naturalis quaestio of an earthquake is not philosophy but religion. The cracks that could shatter the household turn out to be repetitive patterns that add strength and cohesion to the family unit symbolized by this altar. Both aim to reduce the trauma through repetitive acts: for Seneca's reader the mantra moriendum est (‘we must die’) is always on the lips, while the familia of Caecilius approach the lararium daily, observe its reliefs, and say their prayers.Footnote 67 As Sielke states,

Since memory is no longer conceived of as the storage and retrieval of learning processes and information, but rather as a form of continuous rewriting, updating, forgetting, re-membering, and re-cognizing, memory and forgetting – in both cultural practice and cognition – can be understood as serial operations.Footnote 68

These two works show different types of iteration and memory creation – the household of Caecilius Iucundus though cultic actions (and words) informed by the iconography of the lararium, the readers of Seneca's work through the learning encouraged through his text and the consolation granted by study and natural philosophy. In both cases, the context helps to reduce the traumatic repercussions of the earthquake and finds a way to reduce the physical and mental turmoil of that earthquake into being a part of the larger cosmos, a cosmos overseen by a providential god or gods.Footnote 69

Footnotes

I owe a great debt to the editors and reader of Greece & Rome for their extensive assistance and encouragement. Andrew T. Wilburn and Elizabeth Wueste provided astute comments and questions. Thanks to Lizzie Edgar for helping with image permissions. Any remaining errors are my own.

References

1 For the purposes of this article, it does not matter whether the earthquake was in 62 or 63 ce. For the debate, see Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Seneca and the Pompeian Earthquake’, in DeVivo, A. and LoCascio, E. (eds.), Seneca uomo politico e l'età di Claudio e di Nerone. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Bari, 2003), 177–91Google Scholar; Hine, H. M., ‘The Date of the Campanian Earthquake: a.d. 62 or a.d. 63, or Both?’ AC 53 (1984), 266–9Google Scholar. The magnitude has recently been estimated as 5.1±0.3 by Cubellis, E. and Marturano, A., ‘Felt Index, Source Parameters and Ground Motion Evaluation for Earthquakes at Mt. Vesuvius’, Annals of Geophysics 56.4 (2013)Google Scholar.

2 See Zanker, P., Pompeii. Public and Private Life (Cambridge, 1998), 124–31Google Scholar; and Berry, J., The Complete Pompeii (London, 207), 236–42Google Scholar, on the state of the forum and the desire for households to rebuild private spaces instead of public building, as well as a table of buildings, sites, and the state of repair at the time of Vesuvius’ eruption. Adam, J.-P., ‘Observations techniques sur les suites du séisme de 62 à Pompéi’, in Livadie, C. A. (ed.), Tremblements de terre. Éruptions volcaniques et vie des hommes dans la Campanie antique (Naples, 1986), 67–87Google Scholar, is the most detailed description of building responses to the earthquake.

3 The work as a whole is addressed to Lucilius Iunior, who is from Pompeii, but Seneca wishes to use this event as an exemplum for a traumatic event more broadly. Hence, the attentive reader of the Naturales quaestiones is implicated as well.

4 Crownshaw, R., ‘Trauma Studies’, in Malpas, S. and Wake, P. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, 2nd edition (London and New York, 2013), 170Google Scholar.

5 Ibid.

6 The connections between physics and ethics in the Naturales quaestiones has been discussed by J. Scott, ‘The Ethics of the Physics in Seneca's Natural Questions’, CB 75 (1999), 55–68; G. Williams, ‘Interactions: Physics, Morality, and Narrative in Seneca Natural Questions 1’, CPh 100 (2005), 142–65; F. Limburg, ‘The Representation and Role of Badness in Seneca's Moral Teaching: A Case from the Naturales Quaestiones (NQ 1.16)’, in I. Sluiter and R. Rosen (eds.), KAKOS. Badness and Anti-value in Classical Antiquity (Leiden, 2008), 433–50; and M. D. Boeri, ‘Does Cosmic Nature Matter? Some Reflections on the Cosmological Aspects of Stoic Ethics’, in R. Salles (ed.), God and Cosmos in Stoicism (Oxford, 2009), 173–99.

7 The recent definition of PTSD can be found in A. Shalev, et al., ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, New England Journal of Medicine 376 (2017), 2459–69. The authors stress that such a response can derive from the first-hand exposure to ‘actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence’ ,as well as witnessing or learning of such exposure in a second-hand manner. Cognitive behavioural therapy often engages the memories of the event of the patient ‘until the memories no longer trigger intolerable responses and are not avoided’ (2464) – a similar claim will be made for Seneca's therapy and the lararium. See also P. Meineck and D. Konstan (eds.), Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks (New York, 2014); B. Doerries, The Theater of War (New York, 2015); and I. Torrence, ‘Heracles and Hercules: Ancient Models for PTSD in Euripides and Seneca’, Maia 69 (2017), 231–46, for more on the intersections between tragedy, combat trauma, and PTSD therapy.

8 See J. Toner, Roman Disasters (Cambridge and Malden, MA, 2013), 156, on flashbacks as trauma symptoms. B. A. van der Kolk and O. van der Hart, ‘The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma’, in C. Caruth (ed.), Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, MD, and London, 1995), 173–5, are particularly good on triggers. For ‘sites of memory’, see A. Voela, ‘Wit(h)nessing the Other's Trauma: An Exploration of Barbara Loftus's Painting through the Work of Bracha Ettinger’, in M. O'Laughlin (ed.), The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting. Essays on Trauma, History, and Memory (London, 2015), 75–90. See also M. T. Starzmann and J. R. Roby (eds.), Excavating Memory (Gainesville, FL, 2016), for a collection of essays that stress how such sites are shaped by a complex mediation of remembering and forgetting. For a modern comparandum of earthquake trauma, see P. Seaton, ‘Japanese War Memories and Commemoration after the Great East Japan Earthquake’, in A. L. Tota and T. Hagen (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies (London, 2016), 345–56.

9 For the complete overview of the frescoes, mosaics, and a floorplan of this house, see I. Baldassarre (ed.), Pompei. Pitture e Mosaici. Vol. III (Rome, 1991), 574–620.

10 See J. Elsner and M. Squire, ‘Sight and Memory: The Visual art of Roman Mnemonics’, in M. Squire (ed.), Sight and the Ancient Senses (London, 2016), 181, who claim that ‘the very act of remembering was deemed inseparable from that of seeing’.

11 In this interpretation, the rather neglected eastern face of the altar and its relief becomes important for imposing order on the cultic experience. See G. Williams, The Cosmic Viewpoint. A Study of Seneca's Natural Questions (Oxford, 2012), on the perspective that Seneca encourages in his Naturales quaestiones as a whole, esp. 213–57 for the normalizing techniques that he offers in Book 6.

12 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are from H. M. Hine, Seneca. Natural Questions (Chicago, IL, 2010).

13 For more on these views and Seneca's adaptation of them, see A. Setaioli, ‘Citazioni di prosatori greci nelle Naturales Quaestiones di Seneca, 3. La dossografia sui terremoti nel VI libro’, Prometheus 11 (1985), 69–88; and H. M. Hine, ‘Seismology and Volcanology in Antiquity?’, in C. J. Tuplin and T. E. Rihll (eds.), Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture (Oxford, 2002), 56–75.

14 See Q Nat. 6.3.2–4: ‘How much more worthwhile it is to investigate causes, with your whole mind focused on this goal! For no more deserving subject can be found, and you must not simply lend your mind to it, but spend your mind on it’ (quanto satius est causas inquirere, et quidem toto in hoc intentum animo! Neque enim illo quicquam inveniri dignius potest cui se non tantum commodet sed impendat). See also Q Nat. 6.4.2, 6.5.2–3, 6.7.5.

15 F. Tutrone, ‘Seneca on the Nature of Things: Moral Concerns and Theories of Matter in Natural Questions 6’, Latomus 76 (2017), 785. Such ‘intertexts and reinterpretations’ are predicated on Seneca's deliberate and careful use of language and Seneca is well aware that he can model such reinterpretation within the book as well through intratextual repetition. P. Parroni, ‘Il linguaggio “drammatico” di Seneca scienziato’, in M. Beretta, F. Citti, and L. Pasetti, Seneca e le scienze naturali (Florence, 2012), 19–29, also points out how the heightened rhetoric of Seneca's language can activate allusions that will help to prove the scientific assertion and add further emotional resonance to the language (esp. Lucretius in this book).

16 This section (Q Nat. 6.27.1–6, 28.3) is ‘proven’ both by the cause of earthquakes (air) and by the various intertexts to Lucretius; see A. DeVivo, Le parole della scienza. Sul trattato de terrae motu di Seneca (Salerno, 1992), 91–9; and Tutrone (n. 15). Lucretius’ Epicurean science attempts to dispel fear and anxiety (about the gods and death) in a similar manner, and Seneca engages with Lucretius’ rhetoric (Williams [n. 11], 219–25) and conception of the sublime especially often in Book 6.

17 See Q Nat. 6.3.4: ‘We never marvel at these things without fear’ (nihil horum sine timore miramur). See also Williams (n. 11), 219–20, on Seneca's response to the ‘rhetoric of mirum’, and 256–7 on the normalization of earthquakes: ‘the protections that Seneca offers against fear of earthquakes, normalizing such phenomena by casting them as but ordinary aspects of cosmic functioning, are themselves versatile in their applicability to so many of life's stresses and tremors’.

18 If the fear is so great that it causes folks to forget themselves (sibi exciderent; Q Nat. 6.29.1), it is important that his therapy works through memory. This gets at the heart of trauma and Seneca's therapy for trauma, as his approach highlights the necessity of memory for the reader and those who have suffered. What to remember and what to forget are the limits that Seneca negotiates in this book.

19 At the end of the book, death is the remedy of all evils (mors malorum omnium remedium est) and, paradoxically, what those who fear actually desire (Q Nat. 6.32.12): see below, p. 000.

20 Verbs with –cut– roots are important for this book. Earthquakes are often referred to by concutere (‘to shake’) and Seneca takes the root of the word –cut– and shows how it can be used for ethical activities (see Q Nat. 6.1.4, 6.5.1, 6.6.3; Williams [n. 11], 214). Later in the work, it is used of the mind at Q Nat. 1.pr.12 (‘As a fascinated spectator, it examines and inquires into each detail’; curiosus spectator excutit singula et quaerit). This is positive and necessary behaviour for those attempting to learn more about the natural world. For an analysis of excutere in the letters, see V. Rimell, The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics. Empire's Inward Turn (Cambridge, 2015), 137–47. Even the use of percutere (‘to strike, to attack’) at Q Nat. 6.29.3 has been primed by earlier uses that refer to the physics of earthquakes: see Q Nat. 6.10.2, 6.19.2, 6.25.1.

21 Seneca has used forms of errare to indicate a similar ‘wandering’ at Q Nat. 6.1.3, but also ‘mental error’ at Q Nat. 6.1.12 and 6.5.2. This sort of polyvalence helps to unite how mistaken understanding can lead to mistakes in behaviour.

22 Seneca plays on how tremores (‘trembling, shivering’) of the earth can cause fear and how such fear, in human bodies, leads to tremores: Q Nat. 6.18.6 and Williams (n. 11), 247–8.

23 Seneca begins his work similarly focused on death as a law of nature: ‘What is most important? Having your soul on your lips. This makes you free not according to the law of the Quirites, but according to the law of nature’ (quid est praecipuum? in primis labris animam habere. haec res efficit non e iure Quiritium liberum sed e iure naturae; Q Nat. 3.pr.16).

24 If ‘everywhere lies under the same law; nature has created nothing to be immovable’ (omnes sub eadem iacent lege, nihil ita ut inmobile esset natura concepit; Q Nat. 6.1.12), so all people are under the same law with regard to death (Q Nat. 6.32.12). For more on death in Seneca's works, see A. Busch, ‘Dissolution of the Self in the Senecan Corpus’, in S. Bartsch and D. Wray (eds.), Seneca and the Self (Cambridge, 2009), 255–82; J. Ker, The Deaths of Seneca (Oxford, 2011).

25 Seneca repeats this language at the imagined point of death, ‘you do what must be done at some time’ (facis quod quandoque faciendum est; Q Nat. 6.32.6), which restates one of the goals of philosophy as outlined in Q Nat. 3.pr.7.1: ‘How much better it is to ask what ought to be done rather than what has been done’ (quanto satius est quid faciendum sit quam quid factum quaerere). Thus, learning how to die can be seen as the culmination of living the philosophical life, a point stressed throughout his epistles: see Ker (n. 24), 147–76.

26 L. Gloyn, ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home: A Reconsideration of Seneca's De Consolatione ad Polybium’, AJPh 135 (2014), 457, points out ‘the strong Stoic tradition of manipulating the multivalence of language, which is a frequent feature of [Seneca's] philosophical writing’.

27 J. Schafer, ‘Seneca's Epistulae Morales as Dramatized Education’, CPh 106 (2011), 36, makes a similar point about the Epistulae morales: ‘Seneca is keenly aware of the danger of passive, lazy reading. Within the drama [of the letters], Seneca urges Lucilius to read and reread, to question authority, to learn philosophy rather than merely memorize it.’

28 Seneca's use of meditare (‘to reflect on’; Q Nat. 6.32.12) is similar to his call to meditate on misfortunes (Ep. 91.8) or quotations of Epicurus (Ep. 26.8, 26.10). In doing so, one will make death familiarem (‘a friend’, Q Nat. 6.32.12), which is how he differentiates between unusual events that cause fear and common (familiaria) events that are not so terrifying (6.3.2). Note also his use of cogitatio (‘reflection, contemplation’; Q Nat. 6.32.12), which is commonly used to indicate the process by which images are brought to mind in the mnemonic theory of the day: see M. Carruthers, ‘Memory-Craft in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages’, in S. Radstone and B. Schwarz (eds.), Memory. Histories, Theories, Debates (New York, 2010), 18–20.

29 Cf. Ep. 11.8, also about a type of mental reflection, and probably written concurrently with the Naturales quaestiones.

30 S. Montiglio, ‘Meminisse iuvabit: Seneca on Controlling Memory’, RhM 151 (2008), 169.

31 See also Q Nat. 6.32.2: ‘For whom will this disaster not make more resolute, more defiant, against all others? Why should I tremble at a human being or a wild beast, or at an arrow or a spear? Greater dangers are waiting for me: we are the targets of lightning-bolts, of the earth, and of large segments of nature.’

32 A. Butterworth and R. Laurence, Pompeii. The Living City (New York, 2005), 158–65, suggestively describe the physical and psychological aftermath of the earthquake.

33 M. Farooqui, et al., ‘Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Serious Post-earthquake Complication’, Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy 39 (2017), 135–43. It is notable that individuals with a higher educational level tend not to suffer PTSD with the same incidence as those with a lower educational level: see W. Dai, et al., ‘The Incidence of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Among Survivors After Earthquakes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis’, BMC Psychiatry 16.188 (2016).

34 The bibliography is vast. I have benefited from C. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore, MD, 1996); R. Leys, Trauma. A Genealogy (Chicago, IL, 2000); G. M. Schwab, Haunting Legacies. Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (New York, 2010); A. Whitehead, Memory (London and New York, 2009).

35 In this, the reading experience replicates aspects of Lucretius’ work, which ‘is aimed at producing changes in the beliefs and attitudes of its addressee and readers, hence how different descriptions of death and dying are used depends on their position in the poem, and how far the reader is along the progress towards the mental state of ataraxia…that the DRN promises him with the acceptance of the Epicurean world view’ (A. D. Morrison, ‘Nil igitur mors est ad nos? Iphianassa, the Athenian Plague, and Epicurean Views of Death’, in D. Lehoux, A. D. Morrison, and A. Sharrock [eds.], Lucretius. Poetry, Philosophy, Science [Oxford, 2013], 211–12).

36 See Williams (n. 11), 69–75, 289–91, 332–3, for the way in which Seneca embeds interlocutors of various kinds in the Naturales quaestiones. The strong address to Lucilius and Lucilius’ own associations with Pompeii would make him an especially suitable interlocutor, and we can see his irruptions into the text at Q Nat. 6.4.2, 6.6.4, and 6.12.3. By the end of the book, Seneca can tell him, ‘Forget everything else (omnibus omissis), Lucilius, and concentrate on this one thing, on not being afraid of the word “death”’ (Q Nat. 6.32.12).

37 This would probably be surprising for those who know of Seneca's penchant for graphic violence and is an interesting difference between his view of this catastrophe and others such as the plague of Oedipus or the results of anger in De ira. For Seneca's proclivity for dismemberment and hyperbolic violence, see M. Wistrand, ‘Violence and Entertainment in Seneca the Younger’, Eranos 88 (1990), 31–46; G. Most, ‘The Rhetoric of Dismemberment in Neronian Poetry’, in R. Hexter and D. Seldon (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity (New York, 1992), 391–419. A study has shown that the persistence of PTSD symptoms can be a result of ‘pervasive trauma reminders’ and Seneca limits those reminders here: see A. K. Goenjian, et al., ‘Prospective Study of Posttraumatic Stress, Anxiety, and Depressive Reactions After Earthquake and Political Violence’, American Journal of Psychiatry 157 (2000), 911–16. There is a book to be written on Seneca's conception of trauma and how his conceptualization of it in various genres (e.g. the tragedies, Consolationes, and Epistulae morales) affects its representation and possible remedies.

38 American Pyschiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd edition (Washington, DC, 1987).

39 See C. Caruth (n. 8), 6: ‘since the traumatic event is not experienced as it occurs, it is fully evident only in connection with another place, and in another time…that what trauma has to tell us – the historical and person truth it transmits – is intricately bound up with its refusal of historical boundaries; that its truth is bound up with its crisis of truth.’

40 See Beard, M., The Fires of Vesuvius (Cambridge, 2008), 12–14Google Scholar; Toner (n. 8), 29–34; Butterworth and Laurence (n. 32), 151–71. Seneca writes of those ‘who have given up on Campania and have emigrated following this catastrophe’ (Q Nat. 6.1.10).

41 For lararium as the general term for a household shrine, see Orr, D. F., ‘Roman Domestic Religion: The Evidence of the Household Shrines’, ANRW 16.2 (1978), 1559–90Google Scholar. This particular shrine was probably for the penates, even as it plays with iconography common to lararia, as Flower, H., The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden. Religion at the Roman Street Corner (Princeton, NJ, 2017), 48Google Scholar, explains: ‘the main focus of the shrines in the atrium was not on lares, although these familiar gods were usually invited to every religious occasion in the house’.

42 See Flower (n. 41), 48–52, and the way that ‘each figure, in its iconography, relative size, and position within the composition, has a deliberately religious meaning’ (57). J. Bodel, ‘An Outline of Roman Domestic Religion’, in Bodel, J. and Olyan, S. M. (eds.), Household and Family Religion in Antiquity (Malden, MA, 2008), 258CrossRefGoogle Scholar, stresses that worship of the penates ‘embraced collectively a stylistically heterogeneous and conceptually diverse assortment of aniconic and iconic objects representing individual deities, demi-gods, and heroes’.

43 Scholars of the lararium know that another panel (showing the destruction of the Vesuvian gate and castellum) was placed above the lararium because of its thematic relationship to it: see Thédenat, H., Pompéi. Vie publique (Paris, 1906)Google Scholar; Boyce, G. K., Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii (Rome, 1937)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. That panel, stolen in 1977, probably would not have fitted there originally (note modern reconstructions of this lararium with a roof that would obstruct its view). Early photographs show that panel placed with other material in the Temple of Vespasian and not in the house of Caecilius Iucundus. For the purpose of this article, I will focus on the extant panel in its archaeological context on the lararium, although it is notable that the ‘companion’ panel also features a general left-to-right movement from disorder to order, with an altar in the far right corner. Andrew T. Wilburn suggests that the lararium of Caecilius Iucundus was probably carved first, with the other being a later imitation.

44 Butterworth and Laurence (n. 32), 151–3, reconstruct the day and treat this relief as a true representation of the earthquake, whereas others believe that the sacrifice depicted occurred after the disaster: see Guidoboni, E., Comastri, A., and Traina, G. (eds.), Catalogue of Ancient Earthquakes in the Mediterranean Area up to the 10th Century (Rome, 1994), 201Google Scholar.

45 See H. Sigurdsson, ‘The Environmental and Geomorphological Context of the Volcano’, in J. J. Dobbins and P. W. Foss (eds.), The World of Pompeii (London, 2007), 50, who even gives it an Ovidian touch: ‘the two equestrian statues suddenly coming to life as the riders struggle to regain their balance’.

46 Toner (n. 8), 158.

47 For more on such sightlines, see J. Rasmus Brandt ‘Sacra private in the Roman domus Private or Public?: A Study of Household Shrines in an Architectural Context at Pompeii and Ostia’, AAAH 23 (2010), 57–117.

48 See F. Dentamaro, ‘Pompei, Casa di Cecilio Giocondo: un'ipotesi di ricostruzione delle fasi edilizie mediante analisi stratigrafica delle strutture murarie’, RSP 12–13 (2001–2), 132, for reconstruction of the House of Caecilius Iucundus.

49 Flower (n. 41), 72–3.

50 Most believe that the altar was set up in gratitude to the gods: see e.g. L. H. Peterson, ‘Introduction: People, Places, and Rituals in the Religions of Rome’, MAAR 56–7 (2011–12), 12–13, who believes that the altar thanks the gods ‘for not entirely destroying the house or as an offering to the gods in an effort to protect the house from further harm. Perhaps the same could be said of many other houses at Pompeii, which would suggest, in turn, that the denizens of that city truly believed in the value of their new shrines, their gods, and the attendant rituals.’

51 The Compitalia was the annual festival to the Lares Compitales (‘lares of the crossroads’). See Flower (n. 41), 160–74. For the various theories for the sacrifice and the common sacrificial imagery on this relief, see V. Huet, ‘Le laraire de L. Caecilius Iucundus: un relief hors norme?’, in L. Barnabei (ed.), Contributi di Archeologia Vesuviana III (Rome, 2007), 142–50.

52 Peterson (n. 50), 5, my emphasis.

53 His surviving banking records end in 62 ce. See J. Andreau, Les affaires de Monsieur Jucundus (Rome, 1974), and Beard (n. 40), 177–85, for what these records can and cannot tell us about his life, his job, and the societal norms of Pompeii. Butterworth and Laurence (n. 32), 159, believe that the reliefs were memorials to Caecilius Iucundus: ‘Perhaps they were commissioned by his heirs to commemorate the loss of the man who had laid down the foundations of family wealth on which they would build their political careers in years to come.’

54 The herm in the atrium has a dedication ‘Felix, freedman, to the Genius of our Lucius’, tying it into the lararium as well as the general memorialization.

55 See M. O'Laughlin, ‘The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting’, in O'Laughlin (n. 8), 6, on how such sites of memory in artworks ‘create evocative memorial spaces where the memories of past traumas can be evoked, once a point in time is reached when literal memories and actual witnesses to those traumas are no longer available to provide testimony to the actual events’. The term ‘site of memory’ (lieu de mémoire) was coined by Pierre Nora – see his Realms of Memory. Rethinking the French Past, trans. A. Goldhammer, 3 vols. (New York, 1996–8) – and can be usefully applied to evocative monuments from the Greek and Roman world. Because of the unique nature of this altar (as well as Seneca's description of the earthquake), it has become one of the most important visual signifiers of the Pompeii earthquake and helps to define and delimit the specifics of that earthquake.

56 For the associations of scenes of sacrifice with pietas, see T. Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art (Cambridge, 2004), 88–92.

57 Flower (n. 41), 57 (my emphasis).

58 See L. Bodson and D. Orr, ‘Amphibians and Reptiles: Evidence from Wall Paintings, Mosaics, Sculpture, Skeletal Remains, and Ancient Authors’, in W. F. Jashemski and F. G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii (Cambridge, 2002), 327–56.

59 For the modest offerings to the lares, see Flower (n. 41), 40–62, 162 ff.; and W. F. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius (New Rochelle, NY, 1979), 120, who mentions cereals, mola salsa, wine, little cakes, and incense, as well as figs, dates, and almonds. A pig would be a larger offering (fitting for the Compitalia or worship of the Lares Augusti) and there is a pig depicted before the altar in the earthquake relief. Because of the short tail of the lizard, I believe that it is a lizard whose tail has been lost and is in the process of regenerating it. Possibly it is a symbol for Pompeii itself post-earthquake? For the lizard as an uncanny ‘creature of power’, see A. D. Nock, ‘The Lizard in Magic in Religion’, in Magical Texts from a Bilingual Papyrus in the British Museum. Proc. Brit. Acad. 17 (1931), reprinted in A. D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1972), 271–76.

60 It may also evoke the idea of renovatio (very appropriate after the earthquake), as understood by the vegetation on the Ara Pacis. See K. T. von Stackelberg, The Roman Garden. Space, Sense, and Society (London, 2009), 33.

61 Harmon, D. P., ‘The Family Festivals of Rome’, ANRW 16.2 (1978), 1593Google Scholar, my emphasis. Fröhlich, T., Lararien- und Fassadenbilder in den Vesuvstädten. Untersuchungen zur ‘volkstümlichen’ pompejanischen Malerei (Mainz, 1991), 22–7Google Scholar, also describes the daily sacrifices to the lares.

62 Cf. Toner (n. 8), 158 ‘individual recovery often involves fitting trauma into an enduring model of the wider social world in which that individual sits’.

63 Van der Kolk and van der Hart (n. 8), 176.

64 Caruth (n. 34), 58.

65 See Q Nat. 6.32.3–12.

66 See Q Nat. 6.29 and 6.3.1: ‘It will also help to realize in advance that the gods are not responsible for any of this, and neither the sky nor the earth is shaken by the anger of divinities: these things have their own causes, and do not run wild to order, but, like our bodies, they are upset by certain defects, and when they seem to be causing harm, they are suffering it.’ It is only in Q Nat. 6 that Seneca has such a negative opinion of religio, indicating, to my mind, that he is specifically responding to the events of the day.

67 Tib. 1.10, Prop. 4.1, and Hor. Carm. 3.23 give us a sense of those prayers: see Flower (n. 41), 353–6.

68 Sielke, S., ‘“Joy in Repetition”; or, Tte Significance of Seriality in Processes of Memory and (Re-)Mediation’, in Kilbourn, R. J. A. and Ty, E. (eds.), The Memory Effect. The Remediation of Memory in Literature and Film (Waterloo, Ontario, 2013), 49Google Scholar.

69 For Seneca, the study of physics will lead to theology and the understanding of god, as he writes, ‘To look into all this [the natural world], to learn about it, to brood over it – is that not to transcend one's mortality and be re-registered with a higher status? “What use will that be to you?” you say. If nothing else, at least this: I shall know that everything is puny when I have measured god’ (Q Nat. 1.pr.17). For more on the connections between physics and theology, see Inwood, B., ‘Why Physics?’, in Salles, R. (ed.), God and Cosmos in Stoicism (Oxford, 2009), 201–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The earthquake also increased adherents to a new religion in Pompeii, Christianity, and we start to see traces of Jesus devotion after the earthquake: see Longenecker, B. W., The Crosses of Pompeii. Jesus-Devotion in a Vesuvian Town (Minneapolis, MN, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 278–83.

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Figure 1. Earthquake relief on altar of Caecilius Iucundus. Courtesy of the American Academy in Rome, Photographic Archive.

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Figure 2. Bust of Caecilius Iucundus. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.

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Figure 3. Detail of sacrifice from altar of Caecilius Iucundus. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.

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Figure 4. Altar of Caecilius Iucundus, east face. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.

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Figure 5. Detail of east face of altar. Courtesy of the Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski Archive at the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections.