Premier’s Westfield History Scholarship
Amedeo Maiuri:
In search of the ‘dark side’
Louise Zarmati
Arndell Anglican College, Oakville
Sponsored by
PREMIER’S TEACHER SCHOLARSHIP REPORTS, PART 1/2
In 2005 I was awarded a NSW Premier’s Westfield History Scholarship to research the life and
work of Italian archaeologist, Amedeo Maiuri. Maiuri was the longest-serving director of the
excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, from 1924 to 1961.
Having written an HSC Ancient History textbook on Pompeii and Herculaneum in 2004, I was
aware that much of Maiuri’s work had been done during the Fascist era and suspected that Maiuri
might himself have been a Fascist. The aims of my research were to discover if Maiuri had been
an active member of the Fascist Party and to determine whether Maiuri’s association with
Fascism had at all influenced the way he interpreted and presented the archaeology of Pompeii
and Herculaneum. The project would be relevant to my teaching because it would cover both
ancient and modern history as well as the key issues of historiography studied in the History
Extension course.
Once I received news of my award, I contacted my former lecturer from the University of
Sydney, who had first introduced me to the archaeology of Pompeii in the late 1970s. His
response was short and somewhat dramatic: ‘I’m warning you, do not delve into the dark side of
Maiuri.’ For a brief moment I thought of that old joke about ending up in the Bay of Naples
wearing cement shoes, but his warning only served to whet my appetite. As they say, the plot
thickened, and I became more determined to find out about ‘dark side’ of Amedeo Maiuri.
One of the most important aspects of the Premier’s Scholarship awards is that it gives teachers
the opportunity to undertake research in places we normally would not be able to go. For this
reason I will focus my report on the places where I undertook my research and the resources that
provided the most insightful information for my investigation.
Visiting Pompeii
My first visit to Pompeii was on an organised tour with Academy Travel. We were guided around
the site by an official guide, who provided us with accurate and interesting information.
However, even a three-hour tour could only cover a small proportion of this enormous site.
Pompeii is made up of hundreds of micro-sites: the Forum, the temples, the public baths and, of
course, the myriad of houses. Unfortunately many of the famous buildings I wished to see, such
as the Thermopolium of Asellina, the brothels, the House of the Surgeon and the House of Julia
Felix, were closed for repair, which emphasised both the fragile nature of the site and the
overwhelming problems posed by Pompeii’s constant need for conservation, repair and
preservation.
Pompeii: excavating the notebooks
When I later returned to Pompeii to undertake specific research on Maiuri, the benefits of having
a Premier’s Scholarship became apparent. The Premier’s Scholarship staff had provided me with
an official letter of introduction to the soprintendenza, the government body responsible for
managing the site of Pompeii. The secretary of the British School at Rome used the letter to
obtain my permesso (permit) which allowed me to study and photograph specific buildings and
monuments as well as access the log books of Maiuri’s excavations at Pompeii.
As I entered the office of the soprintendenza (located in an ancient house near the Forum), I was
excited at the prospect of viewing Maiuri’s own handwritten records of his excavations.
However, after only about 10 minutes of quickly scanning the enormous folio-sized journals in
which the records of excavation had been carefully recorded in neat, old-fashioned handwriting, I
discovered an important aspect of Maiuri’s work that had not been apparent: during the Fascist
period. Maiuri was hardly ever present at the site. Further investigation revealed that from 1927
Maiuri had spent most of his time at Herculaneum rather than working on the day-to-day
excavations at Pompeii. That fieldwork had been done under the direction of Dr Olga Elia, but
unfortunately she has received little recognition for her contribution to the archaeology of
Pompeii during the pre-war years.
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So, if Maiuri was not actually excavating Pompeii, what was he doing? During the Fascist period
Maiuri spent his time doing what he had been appointed to do: operating as the ‘PR man’ for
archaeology, not only for Pompeii and Herculaneum, but also for the whole area of southern
Italy which made up his archaeological jurisdiction. Maiuri’s job was to oversee and manage all
the sites in Campania region, interpret the excavation reports prepared by his subordinates (such
as Olga Elia) and publish the results.
Maiuri was a prolific writer and considered by his contemporaries to be a poet in the romantic
style of his personal hero, Virgil. By 1923 when Maiuri was appointed to replace Vittorio
Spinazzola as Superintendent of the Antiquities of the Naples region he had published
54 scholarly articles in less than 10 years as a professional archaeologist. Throughout his life he
wrote hundreds of publications, not only in scholarly journals but also for the popular press,
including newspaper articles and guidebooks.
It became obvious that one of the reasons for Maiuri’s appointment was his outstanding track
record of archaeological publications, both academic and popular, and this fitted in well with
their overall program of promoting the imperial Roman past in order to justify Fascist policy in
the present. Maiuri was clearly working in accordance with Fascist ideology, but could he be
described as having a personal commitment to it, or was he just a public servant doing his job?
Visiting Herculaneum
My first visit to Herculaneum was on a weekday with our tour group. The visit was very rushed
and unfortunately I was not able to see all the buildings I had planned to see. Also, I was unable
to visit the famous Villa of the Papyri, which is located in another section of the site and
separated by modern houses and huge steel security gates. Sunday is the only day the Villa is open
to the public. Visits can only be made by guided tour and bookings have to be made over the
Internet. I decided to return at a later date to visit the Villa of the Papyri.
An astute observer on the tour had asked, ‘So where is the evidence of the eruption?’, and that
certainly made me think about this issue when I visited Herculaneum the second time.
Volcanic deposit at the Villa of the Papyri
Digging at Herculaneum was intermittent during the 18th and 19th centuries, largely because of
the difficulties of digging through the 20 metres of solid volcanic deposit that covered the town.
Most of the early work focused on tunnelling into areas like the theatre, which would yield the
largest number of portable artefacts. These were then displayed in the lavish villas of wealthy
aristocrats. The Villa of the Papyri was discovered by Karl Weber in 1750 and he worked on it
for 15 years. Excavation was not resumed until 1869 when Giuseppe Fiorelli became director and
continued until 1875 when once again the site proved too difficult to dig and the local
landowners objected to their property being resumed. As an Australian it is humbling to consider
that the earliest excavations at Herculaneum took place years before Captain Cook sailed into
Botany Bay.
It was Maiuri who suggested to Mussolini that Herculaneum be reopened for excavation. As a
result, from 1927 to 1942, the Fascist government poured huge amounts of money into the site.
Under Maiuri’s direction the volcanic deposit was removed, buildings were reconstructed and
restored; Herculaneum was exposed and turned into an enormous open-air museum.
It is in the deposit that still surrounds the Villa of the Papyri that clear evidence of the
devastation wreaked by the series of pyroclastic flows can still be seen today. Even the untrained
eye can identify huge lumps of building material, marble, tiles and brightly-coloured fragments of
wall paintings that have been stuck fast in the sticky remnants of the volcanic flow.
From an archaeological perspective this ‘rubbish’ is a poignant reminder of the enormity of the
event that led to the creation of the site. The tangled mess of building material clearly
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demonstrates that Herculaneum was exposed to tremendous, powerful kinetic forces that caused
buildings to explode, artefacts to be flung great distances and building material to be churned into
a tangled mess of debris that was strewn across the site. This is clear evidence that the 79 AD
eruption was not a gentle process of preservation, but was violent, destructive and chaotic.
It is by examining the deposits at the Villa of the Papyri (and the now-closed Suburban Baths that
were excavated after the Fascist period) that it becomes apparent that both Pompeii and
Herculaneum were purposely cleaned up and reconstructed for the public.
Research conducted recently by the Herculaneum Conservation Project revealed that around
50 per cent of the wall structures we see at Herculaneum today are actually reconstructions dating
to the 1930s. Therefore, Pompeii and Herculaneum are simulacra, artificial reconstructions of the
past created by the excavators in order to give the visitor an impression of what life was like in
the towns immediately before the eruption.
Maiuri’s creation of a site frozen in time
The manner in which Herculaneum was excavated, restored and presented to the public
demonstrates Maiuri’s keen sensitivity to the needs and interests of the visitor. Maiuri created a
view of life in the ancient Roman world that was intended to transcend the distance of time. Due
to the remarkable state of preservation of not only the site but its artefacts, the pre-war visitor
could step into a room and see recontextualised artefacts such as furniture and amphorae and feel
that Herculaneum had been ‘frozen in time’. It was as if the inhabitants had left their houses in a
great hurry only moments before, some with the bread still baking in the oven, and that they were
likely to return at any moment.
A lively scholarly debate among archaeologists questions the frozen-in-time image of Pompeii
presented in popular books and magazines and argues that the site was subjected to significant
disturbances long before excavations began in the 18th century.
My examination of the volcanic deposits at the Villa of the Papyri and study of Maiuri’s methods
suggest that it was Maiuri who created the frozen-in-time image of the past at Herculaneum.
Photographs which I obtained from the Herculaneum archive show that during the 1930s and
1940s Herculaneum looked like a stage set—walls were restored and reconstructed, houses were
roofed and artefacts were put on display in glass cases in the rooms in which they had been
found.
The restoration of the House of the Telephus Relief in the Insula Orientalis is a good example of
some of Maiuri’s more creative presentation methods. When Mussolini visited in 1934, replicas of
eight oscilla (small figures, most commonly masks or faces, which were hung up as offerings to
various deities) were cast and hung between the columns of the peristyle to make it look more
attractive for Il Duce. They still hang there today and give the house a decorative, ‘lived-in’ feeling.
Maiuri’s 1962 guidebook for tourists tells us that the marble oscilla, ‘with satyric figures and
theatrical masks’, were suspended between the columns in the same way they had been presented
in the House of the Gilded Cupids at Pompeii. Other minor panels and oscilla that had been
found in the room above the atrium had been placed in a glass display case in the left wing,
together with various household objects, including a precious necklace of amulets, several lamps
and various remains of bread, small cakes and eggs. Maiuri was presenting a frozen-in-time vision
of life in a Roman town during the imperial period that was an image of the past entirely in
keeping with the Fascist ideology of romanità.
Herculaneum: showcase of Fascist archaeology
Romanità was the idealised view of Italy’s imperial Roman past manufactured by the Fascists to
justify their political dominance in Italy as well as their imperialist expansion beyond its borders.
Mussolini was presented as the ‘new Augustus’ in order to equate his regime with the stability of
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PREMIER’S TEACHER SCHOLARSHIP REPORTS, PART 1/2
the reign of the Emperor Augustus. One of the Fascists’ most ambitious archaeological projects
undertaken in Rome was the excavation and renovation of two of Augustus’s public monuments
—the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) and the Mausoleum of Augustus, which, rumour had it,
Mussolini intended for his own tomb. Archaeology flourished throughout Italy as well as in its
territorial conquests, during the Fascist period as part of this propaganda campaign.
By the late 1930s Herculaneum had become the showcase of Fascist ideology in Campania.
Maiuri’s reconstructions of Herculaneum and Pompeii were a statement about the continuity of
Italian cultural superiority throughout the ages, from the Roman imperial period to the Fascist
present.
Library of the British School at Rome
Another advantage of being a Premier’s Scholarship recipient was being able to obtain
membership of the British School at Rome (BSR) and having access to its comprehensive
archaeology and history library. I was able to photocopy relevant sections of many books and
journal articles, mostly in Italian, that were not available to me in Australia. The scholarship also
paid for the translation of these publications.
The BSR library contains a biography of Maiuri, written by Giuseppe Maggi, his colleague and
successor at Herculaneum. It is definitely hagiography and, most significantly, any mention of
Maiuri’s Fascist past has been left out. Maiuri, however, gives a lively account of his personal
experience of the war in southern Italy in his Neapolitan diary of June 1940 to July 1944. The
Allies bombed Pompeii first on 24 August 1943, partly destroying the museum. On 4 September
Maiuri cycled from Pompeii to Sorrento to ask the Allies to spare the site. From 13 to
26 September Pompeii was attacked many times, with at least 160 bombs in the excavated area.
Then, on 15 September 1943, while Maiuri was cycling from Pompeii to Naples because the
autostrada was blocked by the Germans, he and his companion, a Neapolitan worker, were
machine-gunned at Viuli near a washing pool where women were doing their laundry. The
worker died, the women were wounded and Maiuri’s tibia was shattered. He was taken with the
others to the nearest Red Cross post in a villa at Torre del Greco. Incredibly, further destruction
came on 18 March 1944 with a new eruption of Vesuvius, which lasted over a week. Some
eruption material reached Pompeii, but Herculaneum was spared, which made Maiuri conclude
that the effects of the eruption had been different in the two towns during the 79 AD event.
Most importantly, the BSR library also contained Maiuri’s first book, entitled Ercolano (1932), a
full-colour illustrated coffee-table publication written for the public rather than a scholarly
audience. Here I found evidence of Maiuri’s support of Fascist ideology and a clear statement of
romanità: the foreword contains a quote from a speech by Mussolini on 24 October 1931 in which
he tells the people of Naples they ‘… can offer to the world enchanting panoramas and ruined
cities that are not equalled on the face of the earth’.
The famous Roman historian, Mikhail Rostovtzeff, who reviewed the book commented, ‘No
scientific report has yet been published of the results of Maiuri’s work [at Herculaneum]. It is a
pity … It is a brilliant sketch, written for the use not so much of professional archaeologists as
for intelligent readers in general.’ In the BSR library I found out why there was no scholarly
report. Maiuri published the few articles he wrote on Herculaneum in the Fascist journal, Roma.
His second book on Herculaneum did not appear until 1958, well after World War II. It is an
entirely different publication, not driven by Fascist ideology; it is comprehensive, critical,
analytical and scholarly.
State Archives: the Maiuri files
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of my research was accessing the personal file on Maiuri kept by
the Fascist government. These records are kept in the State Archives in Rome. Much of it was
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fairly mundane correspondence about Maiuri’s job—promotions, pay and working conditions,
but much of the correspondence shows Maiuri as a public servant set on advancing his career by
promoting the party line.
For each year of the Fascist period there was an annual report on Maiuri that commented on the
nature of his current work, scholarship, capacity to handle other work, administrative ability,
morality and awards. Although there was no direct entry on his affiliation with the Fascist party, a
document records his oath of loyalty to the King and government in 1926.
There is evidence that Maiuri met with the Duce on more than one occasion—in 1931 and
(presumably) again in 1937 when he wrote to the private secretary of the Duce requesting a
meeting to present Mussolini with a copy of his latest publication, Breviario di Capri, in which he
‘intended to above all highlight and exalt the imperial Mediterranean character of the island’.
Most interesting was Maiuri’s scheda (personal card) that stated he had no Jewish parentage, and
was a Catholic and not a convert. After Mussolini concluded the Axis alliance with Hitler in 1936
all non-Jewish Italians were required to carry a scheda after 1938. The documents also indicate that
Maiuri’s career advanced after 1938.
Perhaps the most telling is the memo of 13 May 1939 informing the Ministry of Culture that
Maiuri had been awarded the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, first class, by the consul of the
German Reich at Naples.
The records of the State Archives revealed that, even if Maiuri had not been as dedicated a
Fascist ideologue as some of his contemporaries, he fervently promoted the ideology of romanità
in his reconstruction and interpretation of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as in the hundreds
of publications he wrote during the Fascist period. Although Maiuri’s ‘dark side’ appeared to be
more benign than I had initially been led to suspect, I was left with no doubt that Maiuri was
rewarded with career advancements and awards because he had enthusiastically and actively
promoted the Fascist ideology of romanità.
I am grateful to our former Premier Bob Carr for establishing the Premier’s History Scholarships
and to the generous sponsorship of Westfield, whose contribution allowed the scholarship to be
extended into research in ancient history. Without their vision I would not have been able to
shed light on the ‘dark side’ of Amedeo Maiuri.
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