How many hours of my life have I spent spinning! My name is Amaryllis and I am a slave employed to serve Marcus Terentius Eudoxus. You are right, visitor: usually it is the matrons of noble families who work with wool in their rooms, and this house is no exception. Such are the demands of tradition: they spin and weave to prove that they are respectable, hard-working women. The distaff and the spindle are symbols of their domestic role and their virtue; they take pride of place on a girl’s wedding day, brought by the mother as she accompanies her daughter to her husband’s house.
But here in Pompeii wool is also spun for profit. My master is one of these entrepreneurs: after the terrible earthquake a few years ago, he renovated the inner portico of a house on Via della Fortuna, turning it into a textile workshop. He has been successful and has earned a pretty penny, employing me along with a host of other workers.
In our textile workshop (textrinum) we spin and weave under the watchful eye of other slaves, who are appointed to supervise us. Always in a hurry for fear of displeasing Eudoxus, they move among us, distributing the raw wool and deciding on the amount to be processed by evening. We women are the ones responsible for the spinning: my name and those of my companions are written on a column, marking for each of us the quantity of warp and weft threads spun. It’s not easy, you know, spending all day turning the spindle in your hands. But weaving is even more tiring: so the men work at that too. Standing in front of the loom, they pass the shuttle back and forth through the warp, held taut by terracotta weights, moving the heddle bar back and forth non-stop. One of them is a handsome young man – I like him. I steal glances at him while I twist the threads of wool, hoping that he will meet my gaze, seeking distraction from the monotony of the work.
HOUSE OF MARCUS TERENTIUS EUDOXUS
Amaryllis was a slave employed in the processing of wool. This is borne out by a graffiti found in the peristyle of this house, which belonged to Marcus Terentius Eudoxus; another of the house’s graffiti referred to a certain Amaryllis who was a fellatrix, suggesting that the woman was also forced to work as a prostitute.
The domus opens onto Via della Fortuna Augusta through a hallway that leads into the Tuscan atrium with an impluvium made of tuff. Rooms are arranged on all four sides of the atrium: there are two sets of cubicula (small rooms) and the tablinum (study), flanked by a corridor leading to the peristyle. The peristyle, used as a textrinum (textile workshop), was an area with the ideal space and light for wool-related activities, and thus, it must have been a workshop for the weaving and spinning of fabrics.
