Baiae

We humans have strange ideas about risk. For example, the ancient Romans were perfectly aware of the risk posed by the volcanic features around the Bay of Naples. After all, people regularly died by falling into holes full of boiling water or being overwhelmed by bursts of poisonous gas, not to mention occasional eruptions. But people flocked there because of the harbor, the weather, and the splendid soil, making it one of the most densely inhabited regions of Italy. The earth rumbled and belched, but life went on. Buildings were regularly destroyed by earthquakes, then rebuilt even more splendidly. Not even the vast destruction wrought by Vesuvius in 79 AD discouraged people for long.

Consider the modern geological map above, which shows the density of volcanic features in the area called by the ancients the Phlegraean Fields, in the northwest corner of the Bay. The whole region is within the caldera of an ancient supervolcano, and there are at least six craters left by smaller, more recent eruptions. 

I find it startling to peruse an aerial photograph that shows dense neighborhoods pressed up against all these features. Italian geologists have lately been monitoring rumbles deep under the bay, and some of them think the supervolcano might erupt within the next fifty years. Fifty years? say the Neapolitans. Plenty of time to keep partying!

Which is great for archaeologists. Besides the unbelievable riches of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the neighboring villas, the whole region is full of stuff that was collapsed, buried, abandoned when poisonous vapors surged over it, or sunk under the sea. Which brings me to today's subject, the seaside resort town the Romans called Baiae, Baia in modern Italian, smack in the middle of the Phlegraean Fields supervolcano. This once rich and famous place was largely abandoned after half of it sank beneath the waves in the 3rd century AD.

Baiae may have been founded as a port for Cumae, perhaps around 300 BC, although none of the online sources seem very certain about that. It entered the historical record around 80 BC when it became a fashionable place for the sybaritic elite of the late Republic. Caesar and Pompey both had villas there; there ought to be a special, obscure word for "civil wars between men who vacationed in adjacent villas."

Nero (of course) built a villa there; Hadrian is supposed to have died there. This wall painting from a nearby villa may depict Baiae.

The Aphrodite of Baiae, recovered in the 18th century and restored by Canova. When you think about European sculptors of the 16th to 18th centuries, you should recall that they were not "influenced by" ancient art in some vague sense, but spent much of their early careers restoring ancient works, crafting pieces that perfectly matched the original. They knew ancient work in a very deep sense.

Suetonius passes on an interesting story about Gaius Caligula and Baiae:

Besides this, he devised a novel and unheard of kind of pageant; for he bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about thirty-six hundred paces,​ by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a double line, afterwards a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of the Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days. . .   I know that many have supposed that Gaius devised this kind of bridge in rivalry of Xerxes, who excited no little admiration by bridging the much narrower Hellespont. But when I was a boy, I used to hear my grandfather say that the reason for the work, as revealed by the emperor's confidential courtiers, was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was worried about his successor and inclined towards his natural grandson,​ that Gaius had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the gulf of Baiae with horses.

Seneca (of course) left us a famous denunciation of the place:

Baiae is a place to be avoided, because, though it has certain natural advantages, luxury has claimed it for her own exclusive resort. "What then," you say, "should any place be singled out as an object of aversion?" Not at all. But just as, to the wise and upright man, one style of clothing is more suitable than another, without his having an aversion for any particular colour, but because he thinks that some colours do not befit one who has adopted the simple life; so there are places also, which the wise man or he who is on the way toward wisdom will avoid as foreign to good morals. Therefore, if he is contemplating withdrawal from the world, he will not select Canopus (although Canopus does not keep any man from living simply), nor Baiae either; for both places have begun to be resorts of vice. At Canopus luxury pampers itself to the utmost degree; at Baiae it is even more lax, as if the place itself demanded a certain amount of licence. We ought to select abodes which are wholesome not only for the body but also for the character. Just as I do not care to live in a place of torture, neither do I care to live in a cafe. To witness persons wandering drunk along the beach, the riotous revelling of sailing parties, the lakes a-din with choral song, and all the other ways in which luxury, when it is, so to speak, released from the restraints of law not merely sins, but blazons its sins abroad — why must I witness all this?

Seneca even blamed Hannibal's defeat in the Second Punic War on the winter he spent in this region, which softened and corrupted him.

One of Baiae's main attractions was its baths, which left the most impressive on-shore ruins.

The larger chambers of the baths were roofed with concrete domes, one of which was probably the largest in the world until the Pantheon was built in Rome.

It's an amazing place, somewhat ignored because if you have two or even three days in Naples you're probably still better off spending it all at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

I have been thinking about Baiae because of the convergence of two themes. First is all the reading I have done about the surging volcanism around Naples. Second is Graham Hancock. I know I should just get Graham Hancock out of my head instead of letting him have all that space rent free, but it seems like no matter what cool archaeological discovery I look into somebody is citing Hancock to denounce the official archaeological explanation. One of Hancock's recurring gestures is to attack archaeologists for ignoring all the evidence for ancient civilizations drowned by rising seas. But archaeologists love drowned cities! There are hundred of publications about Baiae. The submerged part of the town is an archaeological park, and thousands of people dive or snorkle there every year.

Archaeologists are not dour scholars who hate fun; on the contrary they have, as a group, a love of adventure and a contempt for desk-bound fuddy-duddies. To me the weirdest thing about Hancock's Atlantis schtick is his insistence that archaeologists don't accept his cool version of the past because we are sinister grouches who feel threatened by everything new, different, cool, or meaningful. That is exactly the oppsite of archaeology's real problems.