HOCW68: Woman with wax tablets and stylus (so-called "Sappho"). Pompeii, Italy. 50-79 CE.

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Woman with wax tablets and stylus (so-called "Sappho"), Fresco, 50-79 AD
Height: 37 cm (14.6 in); Width: 38 cm (15 in)
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

It's Women's History Month, and what better way to celebrate the inspirational women of history than this painting of a Pompeian woman? Discovered in 1760 in Insula VI – the north-western corner of Pompeii, the city that was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE – the painting attracted attention as a possible portrait of Sappho, the Greek lyric poet who lived on Lesbos around 600 BCE and the most famous woman writer in the ancient world. Although it's easy to see why the identification with Sappho was made – it's unusual to see a woman depicted with writing implements, and the sitter's gesture with the stylus held to her mouth is particularly suggestive of literary composition – there are several elements that mark her out as a very contemporary Pompeian woman. The wax tablets in her left hand are bound together with ribbon, and were commonly used for accounting, while the stylus itself was a Roman writing tool (the writer would use it to scratch into the wax surface of the tablets; the tablet could then be 'erased' by melting the wax). Her hair is captured in a gold hair-net, and she wears hooped gold earrings and richly dyed clothing. Even if the woman portrayed here doesn't represent the Greek poet or a real Pompeian inhabitant, there is something in the directness of her gaze and the slight hesitancy of the stylus pressed against the lips, I think, which draws us into her world. She invites us to remember the many women of ancient history, from archaic Greek poets to Pompeian nobles – and, as we'll see in the next couple of entries, artists, slaves, priests, and prostitutes, too – the whole rich range of women's activities in antiquity.