Everyday life and society in Pompeii and Herculaneum: Reconstructing work, leisure and religion from QCE Ancient History Unit 3 sources
“Investigate and interpret sources for everyday life in Pompeii and Herculaneum, including occupations and the economy, food and dining, leisure and entertainment, religion, the roles of women, freedmen and slaves, and the evidence of graffiti, inscriptions, wall paintings and artefacts”
Graffiti, electoral notices, wall paintings, inscriptions and artefacts let historians reconstruct the daily life of Pompeii and Herculaneum: a diversified economy of trades and food service, communal dining and bars, layered religion from Roman gods to the cult of Isis and household lararia, and a steep social hierarchy in which women, freedmen and slaves all left traces. Thousands of graffiti make these the best-documented ordinary towns of the ancient world.
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What this dot point is asking
QCAA wants you to reconstruct daily life and social structure in Pompeii and Herculaneum from sources. You should cover work and the economy, food and dining, leisure and entertainment, religion, and the roles of women, freedmen and slaves. The richest evidence is the small-scale, everyday material: graffiti, painted electoral notices, shop signs, wall paintings, inscriptions and ordinary artefacts. The skill is using fragmentary, often anonymous evidence to build a picture of a living society.
The answer
Work and the economy
Pompeii was a working commercial town, not a resort. The evidence shows a wide range of occupations: bakers (35 bakeries identified, several with carbonised bread still in the ovens), fullers cleaning and dyeing cloth, garum (fish sauce) producers (the workshop of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, whose product was branded on amphorae), potters, metalworkers, innkeepers and farmers working the fertile slopes. Painted shop signs and the layout of premises identify trades; amphorae and their stamps trace the wine and oil trade across the Mediterranean. The economy was diversified and outward-looking, with the Sarno port linking Pompeii to wider trade networks.
Food, dining and leisure
Diet is reconstructed from carbonised food remains (at Herculaneum especially), latrine and drain deposits, frescoes of food, and the bars themselves. People ate bread, olives, figs, grapes, fish, eggs, cheese and modest amounts of meat. The thermopolia (bars with sunken counters holding dolia for hot food) served those without kitchens, which was most of the population. Elite dining happened in the triclinium (dining room) with diners reclining on couches, surrounded by wall paintings; the garden triclinia at the House of the Vettii and elsewhere show outdoor dining.
Leisure crossed social lines. The amphitheatre's gladiatorial games, the two theatres, the public baths and the palaestra were shared spaces. Graffiti record the popularity of individual gladiators (one names a Thracian who made the girls sigh) and betting; painted notices advertised games. Board games and dice are recovered as artefacts.
Religion
Religion was layered. The state cults of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus (Pompeii's patron deity) and the deified emperors were served by the forum temples. Alongside them, the Egyptian cult of Isis had a prominent temple, rebuilt after the AD 62 earthquake, showing the spread of eastern mystery religions into Italy. Most intimate is household religion: nearly every house had a lararium (a shrine to the lares and penates, the protective household gods), often painted with serpents and the genius of the head of the household. Tomb inscriptions along the roads out of town record beliefs about death and status. The religious evidence reconstructs a society that was simultaneously civic, cosmopolitan and domestic in its worship.
Women, freedmen and slaves
The social structure was steep and is visible in the sources.
Women appear far more than in most ancient evidence. Eumachia, a wealthy public priestess, funded a major building on the forum, her statue and inscription surviving, showing that elite women could hold public religious office and act as patrons. Julia Felix rented out a large property complex, evidence of female property ownership and business. Electoral notices show women publicly endorsing candidates (women could not vote, but their endorsements were displayed). At the other end, frescoes and the lupanar (brothel), with its explicit wall paintings and graffiti, attest to enslaved women working in prostitution.
Freedmen (manumitted slaves) were a dynamic group. The Vettii brothers, freedmen who grew rich, owned one of the finest houses. Freedmen could not hold the highest magistracies but could serve as Augustales (priests of the imperial cult), a route to status recorded in inscriptions. Their prominence shows real social mobility within a slave society.
Slaves are the hardest group to recover because they rarely left their own record. They appear in others' graffiti, in the architecture of service quarters and kitchens, in the bodies found in working areas, and occasionally in inscriptions naming them. Reconstructing slave life requires reading the evidence against the grain, looking for the people who built and ran the town but were not allowed to author its records.
The value and limits of the everyday evidence
Pompeii preserves thousands of graffiti and dipinti (painted inscriptions), from political slogans and shop advertisements to insults, love notes, poetry, prices and crude drawings. This makes Pompeii and Herculaneum the best-documented ordinary communities of the ancient world. But the evidence is fragmentary, often anonymous, and skewed toward those literate enough to write or wealthy enough to commission paintings. The eruption preserved a single moment, not a continuous record, and early excavation lost context. Reconstruction therefore combines many small sources and acknowledges what cannot be known.
Eumachia, a public priestess, financed a large building on the Pompeii forum and was honoured with an inscribed statue set up by the fullers. She is direct evidence that elite women in a Roman town could hold religious office and act as public benefactors, even though they could not vote or hold magistracies.
A common Unit 3 task asks you to use sources to reconstruct daily life. Work through it in steps.
Step 1: Plan by theme
Cover work, food and dining, leisure, religion and social structure so the answer is comprehensive.
Step 2: Match evidence to each theme
Assign sources: shop fronts and amphorae for work, carbonised food and thermopolia for dining, the amphitheatre and graffiti for leisure, temples and lararia for religion, and Eumachia and the Vettii for social structure.
Step 3: Read the social hierarchy across groups
Treat women, freedmen and slaves separately, noting that slaves rarely left their own record and must be read against the grain.
Step 4: Interpret the everyday evidence
Explain what graffiti and dipinti reveal directly (slogans, prices, leisure) rather than just listing them.
Step 5: State the limits
Note the bias toward the literate and wealthy, the anonymity, and the single-moment problem.
- Treating Pompeii as a leisure resort
- It was a working town with bakeries, fulleries, garum workshops and a busy port. The economy was central to daily life.
- Assuming women were invisible
- Eumachia, Julia Felix and electoral endorsements show elite women acting publicly, even within legal limits.
- Generalising one house to all society
- The House of the Vettii is exceptional. Balance elite evidence with the bars, workshops and service quarters where most people lived and worked.
- Forgetting the silence of slaves
- Slaves built and ran the town but rarely authored sources. Acknowledge this gap rather than ignoring it.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of QCAA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice6 marksUse Sources 1 and 2 in the stimulus book to explain what they reveal about the roles of women in Pompeii. (Source 1 is the inscription honouring the priestess Eumachia on the forum building she funded; Source 2 is a painted electoral notice in which a woman endorses a candidate.)Show worked answer →
This IA1 source-examination question awards marks for what each source reveals and how its type supports the claim.
- Source 1 (Eumachia inscription)
- Explain it shows an elite woman holding public religious office and acting as a benefactor, funding a major forum building, evidence that women could be public patrons.
- Source 2 (electoral notice)
- Explain that although women could not vote, their endorsements were publicly displayed, showing women had a recognised public voice in civic life.
- Marks
- Reward a claim about women's roles for each source anchored in the specific source type, noting the legal limits.
Practice9 marksEvaluate the usefulness of graffiti and inscriptions for reconstructing everyday life in the Cities of Vesuvius.Show worked answer →
A Paper 2 extended response weighing the evidence and reaching a judgement.
- Strengths
- Thousands of graffiti and dipinti record political slogans, advertisements, prices, love notes and insults, making these the best-documented ordinary towns of the ancient world and giving direct, contemporary voices.
- Limits
- The evidence is fragmentary, often anonymous, and skewed toward the literate and wealthy; slaves rarely authored sources, and the eruption preserved only a single moment.
- Judgement
- Conclude graffiti and inscriptions are uniquely useful for reaching ordinary voices but must be combined with archaeology and read for who could and could not produce them. Markers reward specific examples and a calibrated judgement.