Chapter 1: What makes Paestum a significant ancient site in Italy?
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You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's 480 BC. The calm waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea are a royal blue, with the Italian coast visible in the distance.
A small ship sails north, carried by a favourable wind and keeping close to the shoreline. It's a trading ship, full of fancy vases. The helmsman and his crew had come from Athens. They were sailing north to trade with the great power that dominated Italy at that time, the Etruscans, who had developed quite a love for Greek art.
Over the past few weeks, they had been sailing around the Italian coastline, passing numerous cities along the way, Tarentum, Croton, Regium, Elea, valued havens in a world where sailing at night was avoided. Now they could see the next port city on the horizon, situated in a great fertile plain with mountains rising up behind.
Impressive stone walls surround it, and beyond, protruding above this defence, the tops of the great monuments that define this city were visible. Two large temples side by side, one bigger and grander than the other, shouting out a clear message, Greeks live here. A warm bed, wine and music awaited the helmsman that night, familiar Greek comforts in a foreign land.
He thanked Poseidon for the ship's safe journey so far. He vowed to make an offering to the terrifying deity as soon as he landed, lest his luck change. It was the least he could do. He was entering the god's namesake city, after all. Hello and welcome to a very special episode of The Ancients.
Now, last year I had the privilege of visiting what I will unashamedly say is my favourite ancient site in Italy. Not Pompeii, not the Colosseum, but Pestum. Home to some of the best surviving ancient Greek temples outside of Greece and so much more. Why is it my favourite site?
Well, I love the story of the ancient Greeks who went west and settled in southern Italy and the interactions they had with various Italian peoples, including the Romans. Sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. We were there at Pestum to create a documentary all about this ancient city, A Tale of Three Cities, which you can go and watch now on History Hit. We'll put a link in the description.
In this episode we'll be walking you through this stunning site, we'll shine a light on some of its greatest treasures, how this city has legacies left by Greeks, Etruscans, Lucanians and Romans, and why this site should be on any ancient history enthusiast's bucket list of places to visit.
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Chapter 2: How did the Greeks establish colonies in southern Italy?
Others might say Peistum. Others still Peestum. But rest assured, we are always talking about the same place. Let's get into it. Pestum lies in southern Italy, about a kilometre from the coast and 90 kilometres southeast of Naples. Founded by the Greeks at the turn of the 6th century BC, it was originally called Posidonia after the city's divine protector, the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon.
An appropriate deity for a city joined to the rest of the Greek world by its proximity to the sea.
It's on the Gulf of Salerno, and it's about two to three kilometres inland, so we're talking coastal plain with a low plateau, which is where the city actually is.
That's Dr Catherine Lomas, Honorary Research Fellow at Durham University and the editor of the new book, The World of the Western Greeks.
Basically, we're talking about somewhere which is quite close to the coast. It's about 10 kilometres south of the River Sele, which is one of the major waterways of southern Italy. So it's got very good maritime connections and a good way of bringing goods in, shipping goods out, keeping connections, which obviously is important because land transport is slow and expensive at this date.
Basically, it's got the Apennines sort of inland, and also the Calabrian Mountains to the south, with passes leading southwards, which may have been significant in why the site was chosen. The area is quite prone to flooding and waterlogging, which is significant in its later history, so that's quite important.
But also, it controls a very large territory of very fertile land, so it's got really good resources and good connections with the wider world, both Greek and non-Greek.
Pestum was one of numerous settlements that the Greeks founded across the ancient Mediterranean. These stretched from Crimea to North Africa to Sicily and southern Italy. These settlers brought their Greek culture with them to these distant shores. They maintained close links between their new home and the mother city that they came from. Links that endured for generations.
Magna Graecia, or Megale Hellas as it was known in Greek, literally means Greater Greece or Great Greece, and it's conventionally used to refer by scholars to the Greek settlements in Italy. These are conventionally termed colonies, but that's actually really contentious. Quite a lot of scholars reject that term in favour of something much more neutral like migration.
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Chapter 3: What are the architectural features of the temples in Paestum?
They headed west, sailing around the toe of Italy in search of a new homeland. It was they who founded Posidonia. We'll largely say Pestum from now on to keep it simple. Same place. Over the following decades, Pestum would grow and start to establish itself in the area, Its people built a harbour, taking advantage of the trade routes, and farmed the abundant arable lands on this coastal plain.
Word soon spread, with more settlers arriving at Pestum over the course of the 6th century, keen for a fresh start in this fledgling city. Early on, Pestum's story was intertwined with Sybaris. But that all changed at the end of the 6th century, when Sybaris was destroyed.
According to the Greek geographer Strabo, Sybaris had grown into a rich and powerful city, but its people grew arrogant and decadent. This is where we get the word Sybarite from. And this led to their swift downfall. In a war with Croton, a neighbouring Greek city and modern-day Crotone, Sybaris was destroyed.
The armies of Croton diverted the water from the nearby river, flooding Sybaris and forcing its people to flee. It's likely that many of these Sybarite refugees fled to Pestum. Pestum had outlived the mother city and its prominence would only increase. By the middle of the 5th century BC, Pestum had many of the classic hallmarks of an ancient Greek city.
If we're looking at Peaceton as, say, a visitor walking into the city, it would have been a walled city with quite imposing monumental gates. It would have had the new temple, which is currently under excavation, which was visible from the sea right near the Porta Marina in the western end of the city. So if you were arriving by sea, that's pretty much the first thing you would have seen.
And then you can walk down these long, narrow streets of houses and workshops and shops and And when you got to the centre, you would have the agora, which was very big by Greek agora standards, probably somewhere around about 330 by 300 metres. And in the middle, it's got a hero shrine, a heroon, which may have been the cult of the founder, the oikist, as the Greeks called them.
By the beginning of the fifth century, it's also acquired an ecclesiasterion, which is a circular building with stepped seats, a bit like a theatre, which is where political assemblies are held. And that, again, gives you some sort of insight into the size of the city, because at a guesstimate, that could have probably seated about 1,500 to 1,700 people.
And if you take into account the fact that the Greek cities only allowed adult male citizens into places like an Ecclesiasterion, therefore you've got a multiplier that you can add on for wives, children, slaves, non-citizens, that gives you a really quite substantial population of probably in the region of 10,000 to 12,000 people. So it's quite a substantial-sized city.
Pestum was not just substantial, it was also incredibly striking, defined by three great temples that dominated the city. They were built between 550 and 450 BC, all made from local limestone. One of them was built at the northern end of the city, the Temple of Athena. The other two are situated in the south, right next to each other.
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Chapter 4: Which gods were worshipped at the temples of Paestum?
It's called Doric after the long almost 9-metre high fluted columns that surround the outside of the temple, 36 in total. They are called Doric columns. A small capital adorns the top of each column, supporting the top half of the temple. Directly above the columns, on all four sides, is a long blank rectangular strip called the architrave. Above that is another rectangular strip.
But this time, the strip is intersected with regular patterns of three vertical lines. Now those three vertical lines are called triglyphs, and the blank squarish spaces created between them are called metopes. Usually, that would be where you would find carved reliefs, but none survive on this particular temple.
Either the metopes were left empty or they were painted and the paint hasn't survived. Finally, right at the top at each end of the temple, you have one of the most iconic parts of its design, the pediment, the triangular top. We usually picture pediments filled with statues, posing in clever ways to take advantage of the diminishing space.
But, once again, no such decorations survive on this temple. But let that not take away anything from the majesty of this building. Visually, it is perfect. One of the best Doric temples in the world, magnificent and awe-inspiring. Stepping inside, you are dwarfed by the large Doric columns that fill its interior.
And it's not just single-tiered, if you look up, you notice that there is another level of columns in the centre. The remains of limestone stairs confirm the fact, this temple originally had multiple floors. It was here, within the grand ruins of the Temple of Neptune, that I met Dr Tiziana D'Angelo, director of the Archaeological Park of Pestum and Tivellia. Tiziana, this does just blow me away.
I'm so excited. And this was right at the heart. Was this the sacred centre of the temple?
Yes, right now we're in the naus, the cellar. This would have been the space where the cult statue was placed. And you always have to remember that Greek temples are not like churches. They were very different. They were more like, you know, the house of the god. And worshippers would have had access to these buildings, but most of the sacred rituals would have taken place outside by the altar.
So this is just the big house for the god. But do we know which god was worshipped here?
That is a very good question and one that we've been trying to answer. I mean, when the first archaeologists came to Pestum during the Grand Tour and they saw this monumental building... So that's 18th century Grand Tour we're talking about. Yes, 18th century, mid-18th century, that's when the site starts being rediscovered, as it were.
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Chapter 5: What role did the Lucanians play in the history of Paestum?
So interestingly, that one is almost, they're experimenting with Doric architecture and this is almost a finalized version of it when they've almost got the style nailed out more to a tee.
Yeah, even though, you know, it's not always as easy as that. Of course, absolutely. With this temple in particular, the project must have changed along the way. So when they started building it, probably towards the end of the sixth century, they had an idea of what the temple would have looked like. And then the project changed, and that's why they probably finished it a bit later.
And we see this change precisely between, you know, by looking at the base of the temple, the podium of the temple, and then the upper part of it, which are different.
You mentioned that at the end of the 6th century BC, so that's within roughly a hundred years of Pestum being founded, it seems pretty quick. Was this almost a statement of power, of the wealth of Pestum at that time? That within a hundred years of it being founded they could already build massive temples like this?
I mean, the city was indeed very wealthy, just like its mother city in Calabria, Sybaris. But it also had, you know, very skilled architects and, you know, engineers. So in 510 BC, when the mother city of Poseidonia, Sybaris, was destroyed,
destroyed, then what we see here in Pastum is almost like a process of monumentalization of this city, which would have to some extent also replaced its mother city in terms of its power and control over Western Greece.
So it's almost like the colony overtakes the mother city, almost kind of the apprentice becomes the master in a weird kind of way. Yeah.
Well, I mean, in some ways, yes. And then you can imagine that probably, but again, you know, this is also speculation, but probably you would have had some, you know, groups of people from Sybaris also coming here to Poseidonia after the destruction of the city.
And so how powerful and significant does Greek Pestum, does Poseidonia become?
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Chapter 6: How did Roman expansion impact Paestum?
What exactly can we see here? I'm guessing this figure right in the centre, the main character, this is the diver.
Exactly. This is the diver. This is a diving scene. But first of all, let's just try and imagine this tomb. This is the lid. And this is the interior side of the lid.
So this would be face down in the tomb.
Exactly. The figure of the diver would have been right above the deceased's face. So the tomb was decorated on the inside. So its interior walls were decorated with frescoes. And this in particular was, as I said, the lid. So there you have, you know, the diver. This is a very special painting and it's become, over the years, almost like an icon of the archaeological park of Pestum.
And what other things can we see here? So we've got this kind of, this platform-like image here, and is there water there? So what are these other details?
Yeah, so here we have, as you said, you know, we've got this sort of tower, this platform, and the diver, you know, has just jumped off that platform, exactly. And here what you have is water. It looks like a lake, maybe the sea, you know, we don't know. I mean, this scene is still so mysterious to us. And, you know, here we have some trees, and...
What makes it so interesting is the fact that it doesn't have so many comparisons, so many comparanda that we can look to in order to reconstruct what is going on. And there are so many interpretations that have been suggested, that have been put forward for this scene. But in a way, you know, we're still thinking, we're still trying to figure out the diver.
We've got some interesting kind of floral patterns and trees either side. But what I also love, you can see the pupil of his eye and you can also see like hair as well. So does that reveal more about the actual figure?
Yeah, there's a lot of attention to anatomical details. I mean, you see a little bit of his beard, but not too much. And that tells us that this is a young man, you know, not a full beard that would qualify him as an adult man. But at the same time, this is not a child. So that also suggests that what we are dealing with
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Chapter 7: What are some notable artifacts found in Paestum?
But more recent interpretations try to look at it as a representation of daily life or the life of the deceased. As I said, something that would refer to his passage from youth to adulthood.
But the diver was not the only image found in this tomb.
So, as I said, the deceased was surrounded by these figural paintings, and all around him we have a banquet scene, or more precisely, a symposium that unfolded. So, a banquet to which only men participated.
The symposium was the drinking party of ancient Greek culture. Guests would recline on couches, listen to music, discuss politics and philosophy, drink wine out of rounded cups called kailikes. One of the men shown reclining at the banquet is engaged in a drinking game called kotobos, where you threw the dregs of wine out of your cup towards a target elsewhere in the room and
Another figure plays the lyre. Another is a cup-bearer. Very rarely do we see humans depicted in Greek wall paintings, and these frescoes speak to an influence from the neighbouring Etruscans, the most powerful Italian people at the beginning of the 5th century BC.
At the same time, in the early 5th century BC, wall painting was at its height in the Etruscan world, and there are similarities between this tomb and Etruscan painted tombs, which reminds us again of the importance of cultural contacts between the Greeks and other populations living nearby.
So this could actually be showing the meetings that the Greeks who were here in southern Italy were having with other Italian peoples at that time. That's extraordinary.
I mean, the Greek art here in Pestum is different from, you know, Greek art elsewhere in the Mediterranean. And the reason is precisely that the population here interacted, and sometimes there were conflicts as well, with different cultures. I mentioned the Etruscans and then, you know, the Lucanians also lived nearby and other Italic populations. They created
a very different, a very specific type of art. And in the banquet scene we can see elements of this multiculturality.
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Chapter 8: Why should Paestum be on every ancient history enthusiast's bucket list?
Greek culture at Pestum was not suppressed. In fact, the archaeology is revealing quite the opposite. Inscriptions and dedications show how the Greek language endured alongside Oskan, the language that the Lucanians spoke. Pestum's prestigious Greek sanctuaries, including those three great temples we mentioned earlier, continued in use.
As did the Greek cemeteries, as did their public buildings in the Agora. Lucanian elites may now have ruled Pestum, but they made no attempts to suppress Greek culture. they admired it. Let's take pottery as an example. Under Lucanian overlordship, Peston produced some of the most beautiful vases from the ancient Mediterranean.
Made in the classically Greek red-figure style, more than 2,000 of these Peston vases have been discovered. Many depict scenes of Greek mythology, There's one that depicts the wondrous birth of Helen of Troy, who hatched from an egg after Helen's mother, Queen Leda of Sparta, had been seduced by Zeus, king of the gods, in the guise of a swan.
Another shows the Phoenician princess Europa being abducted from her homeland in the eastern Mediterranean by Zeus in the guise of a bull. We even have the names of vase makers surviving. Acetas was one celebrity name. Python was another. Both left their signatures on their vases, ensuring their names have survived to the present day. The archaeology shows just how wrong Aristoxenus was.
Greek culture was flourishing at Pestum. The Lucanian elites admired it. Many of these elaborate vases were found in Lucanian tombs. But the Lucanians also had their own rich culture, with a big emphasis on the warrior. And it's at Pestum that we see a fascinating blend of the two in some stunning wall paintings.
More than 400 wall paintings dating to the Lucanian period have been found from tombs around Pestum. Many are stored in the museum's storerooms, a Sistine Chapel of ancient Lucanian art.
Welcome to our museum storerooms.
Whoa! No way! This is an archaeologist's dream, isn't it? Look at this!
Yeah, it's a bit of a hidden treasure. Our storerooms are about 1400 square meters and you see they're completely packed with these gems.
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