Drawings recently discovered in Pompeii suggest that children watched gladiators battling in the ancient city’s amphitheatre. The charcoal drawings, depicting stick figures attacking wild boar, were found during excavations at I’Insula dei Casti Amanti, a group of homes in Pompeii’s archaeological park that opened to the public for the first time 28 May.
“The exposure to extreme forms of violence, even for small children aged between five and seven, is not only a problem in our own times with the advent of video games and social media. The difference is that during antiquity, the blood spilt on the arena was real,” say officials in an Instagram post. The drawings are being studied by experts in child psychology from the University of Naples Federico II.
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii’s archaeological park, told The Guardian: “Together with psychologists from Federico II [university of Naples], we have come to the conclusion that the drawings of gladiators and hunters were made based on a direct vision, and not of pictorial models. They had probably witnessed battles in the amphitheatre, thus coming into contact with an extreme form of spectacularised violence.”
Pompeii was engulfed by volcanic ash in 79AD spewing from Mount Vesuvius. Officials add on Instagram that two victims of the disaster, a man and a woman, were discovered near the House of the Painters site during the same excavation. Other findings recently documented on the park’s social media platform include a mythological scene at Casti Amanti featuring a child wearing a hooded outfit, which say officials, could be the deceased son of a local homeowner.
