Romantic Interlude

To escape the city’s hustle and bustle, wealthy Romans flocked every summer to the Bay of Naples. At the resort towns of Baiae, Puteoli and Pompeii, they lounged on beaches, shopped for souvenirs, visited tourist sites, wined and dined—and perhaps even engaged in a little hanky panky.

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If Rome was the New York of antiquity, the Bay of Naples was the Hamptons.

Every summer, the Mediterranean heat (with its attendant banes of typhoid and malaria) emptied the imperial capital of its bella gente, and the entire fashionable world sallied forth to re-create itself 100 miles south, by the craggy, sun-drenched shores of Campania. There, within sight of the smoking funnel of Mount Vesuvius, surrounded by a hypnotic sea of blue, the emperors built their luxury palaces and the empire’s millionaires raised sumptuous villas. Most patrician families owned two or three slices of local real estate, and many boasted half a dozen. According to the Greek geographer Strabo, who visited the bay around 10 A.D., the whole gorgeous beach south to the Sirens’ Point (now Sorrento) presented a continuous glistening wall of marble-colonnaded mansions—each one lavishly frescoed with images of 053Neptune, arching porpoises and gangly octopuses. The Romans loved to swim in these warm, protected shores, far from the sea monsters and evil sprites that prowled deeper waters, and the sculpted courtyards of their retreats had pathways leading down to sandy coves. Fabulous real estate developments crept up and down the jagged cliff sides, crowding out one another for the most commanding sea views. Some had five tiers, with manicured gardens that stretched for acres. One particularly ostentatious villa was built by a status-crazed retired army general named Lucullus, who had a private tunnel carved through a mountain to fill his fishpond—an engineering eyesore that earned him the withering nickname “Xerxes in a toga.”

The bay’s popularity dated back to the first century B.C., when high-profile residents like Julius Caesar, Pompey and Mark Antony—the CEOs of the Roman Republic—had taken time out from their hectic schedules for “active vacations,” reading poetry in the sun, writing philosophy, debating with fellow aesthetes and working out on the beach. But by the time of the emperors of the first century A.D., the pleasures of the flesh took precedence over those of the spirit. Soon enough, on hot summer nights, the hills of the bay were echoing with the sounds of drunken carousing, as revelers jaunted from one cove to the next, quaffing fresh oysters at nude swimming parties.

The town of Baiae (pronounced BAY-eye) became the world’s first great seaside resort, with a reputation for truly Herculean debauchery—a free-for-all atmosphere that resembled less a Martha Stewart soirée in the Hamptons than spring break at Daytona Beach. By these steamy shores, the mythic connection between sexual abandon and the seaside, which is such a staple of tourism advertising today, was first forged. The Roman scholar Varro (116–27 B.C.) complained that in Baiae, “unmarried women are common property, old men behave like young boys, and lots of young boys like young girls.” It was “as if the location itself demanded vice,” mourned the moralist Seneca (c. 5 B.C.–65 A.D.), noting that otherwise respectable citizens took to inviting prostitutes out on barges, garlanding the waves with rose petals and competing with one another in drunken singing competitions.

Egged on by the excesses of Tiberius (14–37 A.D.), Caligula (37–41 A.D.) and 054Nero (54–68 A.D.), the rest of the Bay of Naples followed Baiae’s lead, becoming the ancient world’s ultimate theater of the senses—a Crater of Luxury, where Romans could literally let down their hair. Concealed among jagged cliffs, caressed by cool sea breezes, they indulged in prodigious bouts of eating, drinking and fornication. The bay’s once-exclusive social scene was spiced up by nouveaux riches, whose shameless extravagance pushed the bounds of taste to new extremes. The port of Puteoli was a repository of rough trade: Aristocratic revelers often went slumming along the waterfront with assorted sailors, actors, pimps and thugs. Noblewomen went incognito as prostitutes. Nero himself liked to cruise the seediest taverns in disguise.

This notorious round-the-clock bacchanal lured tourists in droves. Travelers could rent rooms in the many boardinghouses that were clustered near the shore; they could lounge in beach-side restaurants and popinae (bars); and when they wearied of self-indulgence, they could select from a cohort of multilingual guides to show them the sights. As in any seaside resort today, from Copacabana to Bali, the sybaritic decadence was leavened by more-respectable acts of sight-seeing. This arc of southern Italy had actually been settled by Greeks back in the eighth century B.C., and a smorgasbord of key locales on the grand cultural trail could be visited either on foot, in a litter, or sometimes by luxury boat. Silk-canopied ferries rowed by teams of slaves went out to the islands of Capri and Procida, whose magically steep shores rose on the horizon like monstrous shark fins; day trips ran to weather-beaten Doric temples, overgrown shrines and the Vineyards of Bacchus, where sea nymphs were said to climb from the waves to nibble on grapes each night. One corner of the bay promised the quiet cultivation of the intellect: The town of Neapolis—Naples—became the world’s first artist colony, where Romans could meet famous writers and attend poetry readings.

Yet, in the dizzying round of high fashion, conspicuous consumption and self-gratification, nobody could quite forget that this was also the domain of Vesuvius. The earth regularly shuddered and trembled, plumes of gas steamed from volcanic vents, and the 055sulfuric scent of potential disaster hung over the hot baths where oiled lovers slipped off for secret trysts. Partygoers seemed not to worry much; in fact, the ominous proximity of the underworld was appropriate, since for the ancient Romans, like many other peoples, death and pleasure were inextricably linked. The great eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. was only a momentary interruption to the bay’s annual routine. A fraction of this sensual coastline was petrified for posterity—along with some 15,000 luckless Pompeiians—but the fiesta went on the next season with added determination. As one cheery song goes in the Satyricon, the ancient novel set by these shores:

O woe, woe, man is only a dot:

Hell drags us off and that is the lot;

So let us have a little space,

At least while we can feed our face.

Thanks to some improbable archaeological finds, we have a fair idea of how Romans conducted their sightseeing by the bay: The first mass-produced souvenirs, in the form of cheap glass vials, have turned up in digs all over the Mediterranean. These chintzy relics—the ancient versions of water-filled snowscapes—were engraved with drawings of local must-sees, to be taken back home to Rome, Ephesus or Marseilles and put on the family mantelpiece.

Sightseers flocked to the harbor of Puteoli (today called Pozzuoli), which was quite safe and respectable by day. Along its mammoth piers, each crowned with giant marble statues of sea horses (shown at right in the drawing above), they could while away a sunny morning watching the maritime traffic in one of the world’s busiest ports—marveling at the huge grain ships from Egypt and the maneuvers of triremes from the naval base of Misenum. Tourists visited the vast Stagnum Neronis (Nero’s Fish Pool). Then there was Virgil’s tomb—the maestro’s ashes were buried in a grotto by the road from Naples, which became a literary pilgrimage site like James Joyce’s grave in Paris today.

Since the ruins of many Roman tourist attractions at Puteoli are still standing, I went to see for myself.

Today, Virgil’s tomb in Pozzuoli/Puteoli lies in a park by a roaring highway. When I dropped by, however, the grotto had been closed by police because of too many muggings. (In fact, nobody is sure if the grave is even Virgil’s—the site was identified as such in the Middle Ages, when the poet was idolized as a wizard.) Pozzuoli itself is a jovial if scrubby seaside suburb of Naples that curls around the remains of a huge amphitheater. The rotten-egg smell from its volcanic vents, which once heated the Roman hot baths, still hangs over the town. All along that volatile coast—known evocatively as the Burning Fields—a sulfuric odor creeps out of nowhere, escaping from the earth like hot breath from hell.

This connection was not lost on the death-fixated Romans. One of their favorite day trips was to a cave in Cumae, where, according to Virgil, a 700-year-old prophetess—the first sibyl—told the hero Aeneas of a nearby route to the underworld.

Today the site is part of a remote and rarely visited archaeological park. I arrived in the middle of a downpour and followed a trail through gloomy forests brushed with mist. The cave was announced by a series of trapezoidal doors carved into sheer rock. It was definitely an unsettling place. Inside its dark underground tunnels, peals of thunder echoed back and forth; icy water dripped onto my head from the ceiling. The memory of a thousand mysterious rituals seemed to ooze with the moisture from moldy walls—as did the words of Virgil, who imagined the sibyl’s utterances being whispered by a hundred mouths in the darkness, while leaves inscribed with 056men’s fates blew about the tunnel.

But what about Baiae? I wondered. What had happened to the greatest of the ancient spas, worshiped by hedonists, denounced by moralists?

In the modern village of Baia, I’d seen some unassuming fish restaurants and a desolate concrete waterfront where pages of newspaper blew in the breeze; a few ruins from the baths sat in the hills, their domes and vaults barely recognizable. But it didn’t even hint at Baiae’s reputation as the Roman tourist playground par excellence, whose reputation of debauchery was unsurpassed. Where were the remains of this factory of hedonism? An academic at Naples’s National Museum of Archaeology explained Baiae’s ghostly absence.

Appropriately enough for the Roman Gomorrah, ancient Baiae was now completely underwater. It was thanks to a volcanic phenomenon called bradyseism, apparently, which makes parts of this unstable coastline gradually crumble like a cake dipped in coffee, and sink to the ocean floor. Sometime in the Middle Ages, Baiae had begun to flake away; now it was gone.

But that didn’t mean all was lost, the museum academic assured me: Underwater archaeology is in vogue in Italy, and an enterprising Neapolitan diving club had started up a scuba operation, with permission of the local authorities, allowing Baiae’s more adventurous visitors to savor its ancient ruins.

No matter that the waters near Naples harbor were among the filthiest in the Mediterranean. I signed up, without a second thought. Here is how a diving operation at Baiae is run:

A motley crew gathers in the dive shop at 10 a.m. sharp—myself, a tubercular Frenchman and a gaunt trio of South Africans who are staying in Naples on a cruise ship. We all furiously don brightly colored wet suits, none of which even remotely fits. About an hour later, the dive master arrives in a silver sports car, looks out at the sky, and decides the weather is too poor to go.

We clients stare in disbelief at the sea, which is entirely placid and calm. We complain and harass the dapper, chisel-featured young dive master, whose name is Emilio, at the top of our voices. He relents, saying we’ll head out in twenty minutes.

Another hour later, everyone is still milling around aimlessly. The dive master is discovered in front of a mirror, brushing his shoulder-length hair lovingly while sipping an espresso.

“It’s really not so nice out there,” Emilio confides, with a world-weary sigh. After much fuming and gnashing of teeth, a mutiny ensues. The clients insist they’ll go out diving anyway, without him. The dive master panics, and agrees to go—in another twenty minutes, say.

It probably helped that three of the clients were South Africans, accustomed to diving in some of the world’s most turbulent waters. They virtually carried Emilio out to the boat (actually a barely seaworthy old fishing skiff) that would take us to the dive site.

Like Naples itself, the water that had looked so glorious from a distance was less alluring up close. Plastic bags, Coca-Cola cans, bottles and mulched pages of magazines drifted by, along with fluttering teams of daisy-sized pink jellyfish known as medusae. If they could survive, I figured, the water couldn’t be pure sewage. Still, I was beginning to see why Emilio was so lacking in enthusiasm for the dive.

After discovering that my regulator leaked and swallowing great gulps of glutinous Neapolitan water, I realized that it wouldn’t kill me—at least not immediately—so I dutifully followed the others down into the cloudy green murk.

The eerie silence of the underwater world closed in as I sank to the bottom. What I could make out, 60 feet down, wasn’t exactly the Caymans: the sea floor was strewn with rusted metal barrels, sunken old dinghies, broken iron chains. Then Emilio was suddenly grabbing my arm, excitedly pointing to a big algae-covered block. It looked like a standard-issue concrete water break, the sort of anonymous cubes dumped on shorelines around the world. But he ran his fingers over some markings on its side—row after row of regular diamonds.

It dawned on me that this wasn’t concrete but the base of the great lighthouse 057of Baiae, past which Romans once strolled on summer nights. Square holes, now covered in verdant slime, allowed the tides to ebb and flow through the foundations.

All at once, the murk and darkness of the water was no longer nauseating—it was evocative and haunting, like stumbling across a lost city in a rain forest. We drifted across the Porto Giulio, where a grand causeway once led to a naval harbor. I’d seen a few of the things archaeologists have raised from this site: a statue of Ulysses, piles of coins, the base of a fountain. Soon we were in shallow water, the residential area of Baiae, where the Romans built their most sumptuous pleasure domes. It was possible to make out pieces of columns beneath their film of green. And then—I could hardly believe my eyes—a whole courtyard was exposed. The mosaics were vivid, white with black wave patterns.

I’d seen floors a hundred times more elaborate in museums, but this sent a shiver up my spine. It was like the opening credits of I, Claudius.

This must have been one of the magical, multi-tiered villas of Baiae, whose dining rooms jutted into the sea so that drunken luncheon guests could lower themselves down alabaster steps for an afternoon swim. According to vividly painted scenes, Roman nymphets effectively invented the bikini here, flitting about in two-piece garments as they 063swam, driving the old men to fits of lechery. This was where a thousand Roman marriages went on the rocks, as otherwise conservative couples were transformed into antiquity’s swingers.

The poet Martial (c. 40–104 A.D.) wrote about a chaste Roman wife who spent too long in Baiae’s famous hot baths, lost her inhibitions and ran off with a handsome slave boy: “She came to town Penelope / And left it Helen of Troy.” Stern Seneca complained: “Why must I look at drunks staggering along the shore or noisy boating parties?” Why, Senaca wondered, did he have to have his sleep broken by the shrieks of naked prostitutes being chased into the sea, or “the squabbles of nocturnal serenaders”? And Baiae was where Caligula stunned even his most ardent supporters by building a 3-mile-long bridge of boats so that he could lead an army legion back and forth, festooned at night by torches and colored lights—all to disprove an astrologer’s prediction that he had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a chariot across the bay. Caligula’s stunt soon degenerated into a wild frenzy, as drunken revelers crowded onto the bridge and overturned many of the boats.

Suddenly, as I was surfacing, a plastic bag floated across my goggles, wrapping itself around my head. I didn’t care in the slightest. Spitting out a laboratoryful of bacteria, I felt like—at last!—I’d beheld the Roman past directly. It was more exciting than Atlantis.

This article, adapted from the book Pagan Holiday by Tony Perrottet (published in hardcover as Route 66 A.D. [New York: Random House, 2002]), appears here by arrangement with The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

To escape the city’s hustle and bustle, wealthy Romans flocked every summer to the Bay of Naples. At the resort towns of Baiae, Puteoli and Pompeii, they lounged on beaches, shopped for souvenirs, visited tourist sites, wined and dined—and perhaps even engaged in a little hanky panky.