Hello! Welcome to my city! My name is Eumachia and you will hear a lot about me here in Pompeii. My dear father Lucius was an important producer of amphorae and bricks and he passed his flair for business on to me. Since marrying an even richer man, who owns extensive land and flocks of sheep in the Lucanian Apennines, I have started up a flourishing wool processing business that has – thanks be to the gods – multiplied my fortunes.
Usually, it is men who finance the city’s most important public buildings, but I have had the privilege of being among the few women of Pompeii who have been able to do this at their own expense! And I have done it here in the forum itself. There is not enough time to recall all the activities that have taken place within it; I shall only say that I dedicated it to the cult of Augustus, to show my support for the emperor. In this I took my inspiration from Livia, his wife, who is very much admired by aristocratic women like us. She is our model, not only in our public but also in our domestic life: I have even had my hair styled like her! Above the entrance of the great building, in full view, I have engraved an inscription commemorating the names of myself and my son as the sponsors. What better propaganda to sustain his political career! In the inscription, I took care to mention that I have also had the honour of being a public priestess in the city for many years. It is a position granted to very few women, among them you will undoubtedly have heard of Mamia.
My tomb is a reflection of the fame that the Pompeians have granted me. It is the largest in the city and you will notice it immediately as you pass by. On the façade to the left of the entrance I have had my name engraved so as to emphasise that I, Eumachia, am the owner and patron, and to show the world my place in society. I say it with pride: as a business woman, priestess and benefactor, I have been awarded all the honours that a Roman woman can receive.
THE BUILDING IN THE FORUM
Eumachia is one of Pompeii’s most famous female figures. A wool and textiles entrepreneur, and a public priestess, she had this monumental rectangular building erected at her own expense, between AD 2 and 3. In fact, the side entrance bears an inscription in Latin which reads: “Eumachia, daughter of Lucius, public priestess, on her own behalf and that of her son Marcus Numistrius Fronto, had the vestibule, the covered gallery, and the colonnades built at her own expense: she herself dedicated them to the moral values of Concordia and Pietas Augusta.”
The main entrance, which gives onto the eastern side of the forum, is on the other hand characterised by a large doorway with a decorative marble relief depicting vegetation. The fullones – the workers involved in the processing of raw wool – dedicated an honorary statue to her with a veiled head (a copy of which can be seen today), which was placed in a niche in the crypt at the back of this building.
THE TOMB
Eumachia’s tomb, which was erected in the early decades of the 1st century AD, is to be found in the necropolis of Porta Nocera, located in the southern part of the city of Pompeii. The monumentality of the building represents the high social and economic standing of the woman, who was its owner and who had dedicated it to herself and her family (“sibi et suiis”). It is, in fact, a very unique building, which takes the semicircular form of the tomba a schola, but expands and monumentalises this design, perhaps drawing inspiration from the architecture of the nymphaea or the front scenes of theatre stages, with niches in the upper order to hold statues, decorated with reliefs, of which only a few sculptural fragments remain.
